European Awards finalists announced

20 May 2009

Finalists in three categoires in the European FM Awards have been announced. The Awards will be presented at the EFMC2009 Gala Dinner in Amsterdam on Tuesday 16th June.

Delivering facilities management services across European boundaries is challenging, but nonetheless more and more large multi-nationals are turning to the FM community to deliver the benefits across their European, and increasingly, global portfolios. Now in their third year the European FM Awards provide an opportunity for FM service providers and their partners to demonstrate how the benefits of consistent delivery, cost saving and customer satisfaction can be delivered in different countries, cultures, languages and expectations.

Three Award categories will be presented and the finalists are as follows:

PARTNERS ACROSS BORDERS

Eurest Services with Shell International
Following a global tendering process in 2007, Eurest Services was awarded a multi £m 5-year contract to deliver intergrated FM services to Shell’s UK, offshore and European Sites – a total of 70 sites. These included global HQ offices, R&D laboratories, refineries, remote gas plants and offshore platforms across the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Poland and the North Sea. Since the contract began Eurest Services has gain more regions including Nordic Offshore, DACH and the Mediterranean Cluster.

The contract priorities are health, safety and the environment and these are continually monitored and measured against KPIs. Consistency of management and operation of processes across the Shell estate has been achieved through introducing standardised IT platforms and operational best practice.

Some 85 percent of services are self-performed by Eurest Services staff, and cost effective maintenance programmes introduced by performing asset and site condition surveys. A ‘One Team’ brand promotes teamwork and innovation and breaks down corporate barriers between all onsite service providers. To date innovative ideas generated by Eurest employees have realised £2.5m of savings, in addition to targeted cost savings of 10 percent in the first year.

Johnson Controls with Cisco
Global brand, Cisco through its partnership with Johnson Controls is creating a consitent message in every one of its offices across the world. They have developed a One Team approach that is client centric rather than geographically centric and brought consistency across 33 locations in 18 countries with a 150 strong team of trained staff.

Cisco needed a partner to support its business and proactively contribute to its success through its in depth appreciation of the challenges of operating across international borders, 12 clanguages and 10 cultures while also increasing customer satisfaction and reducing costs.

The contract started with UK, Ireland, Iberia, the Netherlands from 2000, and Italy from 2002 with the bulk of the other countries. Key achievements have been standardisation SLAs, KPIs, agendas, finance templates, etc, increased operational efficiency across the Cisco estate by 10 percent, environment improvements incuding green energy procurement for European sites, reducing waste, increasing mobile working and sharing best practice across the organisations.

Sodexo with Merck Sharp & Dohme
Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) created a global FM organisation in 2007 with the goal to transition non-core services to strategic partners to drive savings, efficiencies and innovations to support the business strategy. The pan-European outsourced FM contract awarded to Sodexo covers the MSD HQ in Germany, and country head offices in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

MSD wanted the transition to not impact on its business operations and achieve savings of 20 percent of current spend over three years. Applying its tried and tested methodology adapted to the contract, Sodexo ensured maximum efficiencly and consistency during the roll out. It reviewed subcontractor contracts, self performed many services on each site so that the existing 100 suppliers were replaced with a single provider. Germany, Belgium, Italy and Spain have transferred to Sodexo and France is ongoing. The original scope of services was reassessed and where appropriate expanded following an Innovation and Scope Workshop formed by MSD and Sodexo.

There has been high levels of interaction across countries with the central team and country site managers frequently meeting and sharing best practice, and developing a higher degree of cooperation and better service delivery alignment.

EUROPEAN FM STUDENT OF THE YEAR

Ronald Balvers, 24, is a student at INHolland university in Amsterdam Diemen. His graduation project is based in the construction company BAM in its utilities specialist company, BAM utiliteitsbouw. He is exploring the development of facility management opportunities for the company after construction project are finished, by extending the relationship with the customer developed through the project into management and maintenance of the facilities.

Hanna Koskisto, 24, is a student at Helsinki Unversity of Technology, joining in 2002 and changing to studying facility management in 2005. In the Department of Surveying in the Institute of Real Estate Studies, Hanna is working on an international master programme with Hanken School of Economics. Her thesis is in the real estate service sector and aims to assess the needs of a media toolkit for agency/leasing activities in Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

Fatima Stitou, 22, studied facility management at the university INHolland in Amsterdam Diemen and worked part time in the facility department at the Dutch Central Bank in Amsterdam. Using this experience she based her thesis on change management and change strategies for a successful move from a traditional FM organisation to one that co-operates on a strategic level. She developed a competance plan to motivate FM employees to improve their performance levels.

EUROPEAN FM RESEARCHER OF THE YEAR

Nils Gersberg is a PhD student ar the University of Salford and a researcher at Helsinki University of Technology’s CEM Facility Services Research Group. He is currently involved in a research project into ‘workplace resource management for knowledge work’ in collaboration with Stanford University’s Centre of Integrated Facilities Management, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, and the laboratory of work-psychology and leadership at TKK, Helsinki.

Ruud de Haas studied at Wageningen Univerisity in the Management, Economics and Consumer Studies department. Working with the office furniture manufacturer Samas, his research into ‘Which organisational and context factors are suitable to recognise if office furniture customers, who are considering a refurnishing of their office, match with a traditional or innovative office layout concept’ identified critical factors that ensure the successful implementation of innovative office concepts.

Jessica Orn is a PhD student at Helsinki University of Technology - TKK. Her PhD research is part of a study, ‘Office occupiers preferences and needs in a changing business environment.’ This aims to understand occupier preferences and needs as well as combining property classification of offices with an occupier segmentation. The study will provide a classification that will have applications across different European countries.