FM and MEP, happy bed fellows

The Manhattan, Jumeirah Village, is on track to honour all of its development commitments.

The Al Fara’a Group has established its own FM division. MEP Middle East editor Gerhard Hope speaks to director Natasha Gangaramani about the venture, and the integral role of FM in MEP.

Explaining the reasoning behind the new division, Gangaramani says it represents a natural progression for the group. “We are a construction group. All our concerns are independent, but flow into the broader group. Hence we have a ready-mix company, and companies that supply MEP, steel and aluminium structures, joinery and glazing, among others.”

Taken together, this allows the Al Fara’a Group to offer an integrated approach. “So it is very natural for us to go into property development as a one-stop-shop solutions provider, as we are the only developer that has all these diverse disciplines under a single roof. I can confidently state that you will not find any other group of companies capable of matching our strength.”

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Gangaramani says part of the reasoning behind establishing the new FM division was to allow a greater input into the design stage of a project. Traditionally FM is only taken into account at the handover stage, but significant cost-savings and efficiencies can be effected if its synergies are harnessed early enough.

“We realised that a bit of forward thinking at the design stage would alleviate a lot of the problems encountered at a later stage in terms of MEP maintenance. For example, what impact would it have on the elevators breaking down if we spent a little bit extra at the beginning?

“We gradually aggregated a team around this sort of thinking, which has now become formalised with the establishment of the new FM division. The group has 18,000 employees, which implies a lot of knowledge transfer. A lot of times we may not know the answer, but we have the depth within the group as a whole in order to find those answers.”

This means that the new FM division has a core of highly experienced and competent professionals driving its future development.

“They know exactly from the design stage what to make provision for in a handed-over tower so that future maintenance is not too prohibitive. FM is key in reducing these costs. However, it also extends to environmental and health and safety concerns.

For example, we changed our paint specification – not only because we found that the paint was wearing off easily, but its chemical composition meant it could be detrimental to human health,” says Gangaramani.

She says that FM often revolves around the minutiae of such details, which many people do not even taken into account. “As long as you have a knowledgeable FM team to guide you, then it adds considerable value to your overall project. Many of our team members are acknowledged experts, who even have representation on the Emirates Green Building Council, which means we can obtain invaluable feedback from such highly professional sources.”

Gangaramani comments that the construction side of the group is linked intimately with the FM side, as it is part of the contractor’s remit to provide a year’s maintenance on project completion. “This does not mean soft services, but actual MEP maintenance, such as all the electro-mechanical equipment and elevators.