Attending to unique and iconic sites can be a matter of obvious pride to a facilities management firm. The Abrahamic Family House, located on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, evokes that sense of pride. This is what the people at the FM firm AG Facilities Solutions (AGFS) feel. AGFS provides the total facilities management at this site, right from soft services and hard services to security systems. AG Facilities Solutions is a part of the Al Ghurair Investment group.
To give a background, the Abrahamic Family House is an interfaith complex that was inspired by the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Ahmed El-Tayeb. The renowned architect Sir David Adjaye OM OBE designed the complex to embody its vision. Adjaye specialises in public architecture, creating richly symbolic buildings designed to tell stories. His international and acclaimed buildings include the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington DC, the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Aishti Foundation in Beirut, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver.
At the core of the Abrahamic Family House are three houses of worship — a mosque (Imam Al-Tayeb Mosque), a church (St. Francis Church), and a synagogue (Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue) — that provide a welcoming space for Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities to practice their respective faiths.
The three structures are of equal stature, size, and materiality, eliminating any sense of hierarchy. They are connected by an elevated landscaped garden that serves as a shared space for gathering and connection.
The mosque faces Mecca, the church faces East, and the synagogue faces Jerusalem.
“Providing facilities management for this facility is different because the site is critical and sensitive. It is the first-of-its-kind in the world. The building is simple, yet complex,” says Tarek Nizameddin, CEO of AG Facilities Solutions.
It was a “competitive” bid winning this three-year FM contract. Nizameddin adds: “We needed to understand the Jewish, Christian and Muslim requirements for the pray area on how it should be cleaned, and which materials should be used for cleaning. This was a major challenge in mobilisation and operation.”
From a facility management perspective, AGFS has a strong regime for PPM (planned preventative maintenance otherwise known as scheduled maintenance) for daily inspections, audits, and predictive maintenance to make sure that all systems are operational especially security systems, HVAC, power and fire systems. The team at AGFS ensures that there are zero interruptions for visitors at the site. Additionally, the FM firm has retained contracts with all OEMs especially for all critical systems to ensure service continuity.
AGFS implemented a technology application called Fulcrum to address all the DLP and snagging issues. Snagging refers to the process of a new owner, either the client or final customer, checking a new building for minor faults that need to be rectified.
Nizameddin says: “We use this technology to make it easy for our technicians to carry out snagging, condition survey, and asset collection. We further track this snagging after rectification is done by the main contractor. We start building our asset register, PPM regime, and predictive maintenance plan to make sure that we have the critical systems maintained within the timelines. We identify the critical spare parts we share with the clients to make sure that we have the available spare parts provided by the main contractor during DLP. We also attended all testing and commissioning of the assets with the client and service providers to make sure that the systems have been handed over as per the design.”
The Abrahamic Family House is set to offer a diverse range of programming and events, spanning from daily religious services to global summits.