The Integrated Facility Management industry is an essential services sector that enables business continuity throughout the year as even a single day of stoppage can derail their operational plans, profitability and growth.
During the current pandemic of Covid19 Embassy Services has ensured that their clients’ business deliverables are met while maintaining health, safety and hygiene protocols for our all employees and essential staff both on and off site.
The IFM industry is an essential services sector that enables business continuity throughout the year as even a single day of stoppage can derail their operational plans, profitability and growth.
During the current pandemic of Covid19 Embassy Services has ensured that their clients’ business deliverables are met while maintaining health, safety and hygiene protocols for our all employees and essential staff both on and off site.
On this front, the company has managed their staff, clients and the business with resilience. Their primary focus as of now has been to ensure business continuity and recovery plans of their clients and explore newer markets that need their expertise.
The world is in an era where health and hygiene of the spaces around us are of paramount importance and Embassy Services aims to leverage on the same. All the precautionary processes, implementation of recommendations from authorities, industry best practices and ongoing monitoring and reporting that have been developed to fight the pandemic will be an essential part of their business and offerings. The world is yet to redefine the status quo of normal, until then, the company shall focus on our core and develop newer tech and innovations for the post pandemic era.
There has certainly been a great disruption in the commercial sector with all organisations trying to explore various work modules and assessing the safe approach for their staff—it could be WFH/Partial or staggered return to office etc. While the company’s essential staff have been working on site since lockdown, the staff from the non-essential services work remotely and report to the facility only when required.
On the client front, while few organisations have even declared WFH for the next one year, there are few client companies who have already resumed work from the facility keeping in track the norms set by statutory bodies. Some are working on a rotational and shift base model, some have decreased their manpower, and some have ventured into co-working spaces, regardless, as the FMs have taken all the necessary precautions and set strict guidelines that will help clients get back to work with or without a shift in their work model.
Organisations have setup a rule book that addresses the roles and responsibilities of various members involved in a facility such as the FM, the client, and their employees. These go in depth on preparation of a facility for their employees to safely return to work, the safety and security protocols that need to be followed by all the personnel and the compliance that is required as per the government authorities. Making checklists and frequent auditing of these processes is also a primary part of the process.
As an FM service provider, ESPL has implemented several measures within their organisation just as they do with their clients. Inside the work facility, frequent sanitisation, fogging and stringent cleaning measures have been taken for disinfection of a premises. This is done using a range of chemicals and tools that have been designed to cater the current needs. A strict waste management process has been set to ensure proper disposal of medical waste like masks, gloves and PPEs.
On the people front, the most effective measure is certainly WFH, however for those who cannot, thermal scanning at the entry, self-declaration of the personnel’s travel and contact history, restricted entry to visitors and vendor partners, encouraging virtual meetings, wearing of masks at common areas, creation of isolation wards, demarcations for social distancing and provision of sanitisers across the facilities have helped.
The workplace design is in a transitionary phase with time being able to set the perfect outlay. Keeping in mind social distancing norms, workspaces have been altered to ensure a minimum of 6 feet distance between two employees seated next to each other. ESPL has also converted some of their manager cabins into meeting rooms as the number of personnel who can use each room is halved.
ESPL takes pride in pioneering one of the most innovative tech needed for thermal scanning of personnel entering a facility. The automated and contactless thermal scanning device is assembled by ESPL themselves.
This is a system that negates the need for personnel to use a thermo gun and manually enter and report readings. The system uses AI and an optical camera with cloud integration, it automatically triggers an alarm through email and shares the photo of an unhealthy personnel entering the facility within a few seconds. This product and its software are completely assembled in India by ESPL.
The Drone Disinfection is another innovation of ours which gained great traction with the BMC Mumbai, to be used for disinfection and fogging of places which are usually inaccessible. A demo was done to disinfect mosquito breeding grounds in the Worli area of Mumbai, considering the success, this will be used for various such drives that are required to ensure safety and hygiene of all. An industrial level drone is used to hoist a container carrying disinfection chemicals and sprayed over areas. These drones can fly over 500m high for a period of 12 hours while carrying over 15 liters of disinfectant; they can cover an area of over 50 acres in a single day.
E-Spectrum is the company’s newest array of digital FM tools that have been designed to address a technology integrated facility management system. ESPL has customised a set of 12 tools that aid in workforce management, visitor management, raising tickets and complaints, work permits, background verification and attendance, feedback and improvement, inventory management, smart metering, online document processing, audit module and incident report modules. This helps by providing the FM with automation and tech assistance, a paperless ecosystem and most importantly, the ability to manage these functions from anywhere in the globe.
The major changes in the future of work is the reassessment of certain aspect of the business such as business continuity plans (BCP), risk management, setting up of environmental health and safety teams, an emergency response team and heightened measures of security and compliance. These are challenges that are critical to the future as they certainly ensure safety and successful operations in a post pandemic era.