K Venkatesan

Even though the facility management industry has evolved in the last 15 years, Venkatesan opines that we are still facing challenges in acquiring skilled manpower in housekeeping and security services at a competitive cost. Many small and medium players are not able to sustain long term, due to these issues. At the time of designing the Wabag house, the concept of green building was not considered and orders were placed to various suppliers based on general specifications. When Venkatesan took over the project as project manager, he ensured that all green building-related specifications – including energy efficient equipment and monitoring systems – were incorporated. In addition to reduced and sustainable operational and maintenance cost, this led to considerable savings – over INR 75 lakh – in the overall project cost. The facility is now going for green building certification under O&M category with all required points. Based on past experiences in the power industry, Venkatesan introduced the captive power generation through a private wind power-generating company. “In this process, we took board approval to acquire 5% of share from a private wind power generating company to supply monthly load of approximately 120000 units. This was in turn registered with a private windmill company and under captive power generation user category. Now, we use 100% carbon-free power and are eligible to score full points for green building certification. We have also reduced the energy cost by 25%,” elaborates Venkatesan.