Shabnam Mehta

Each facility is designed keeping in mind its utility and function. At Aditya Birla Group, they’ve worked to ensure that all elements are integrated with the aspirations of the occupants. The profile of the workforce is changing rapidly and facilities that were considered as having latest services and technology even five years ago, would today be considered dated. Hence, it is necessary to understand the changing demographics of users and ensure that the services keep up with these changes.

In a conglomerate which has a large number of facilities on account of acquisition, it becomes necessary to standardise services through policy, guidelines and process documents. Mehta’s team, has hence, prepared such a guideline and ensured that it is readily available across all stakeholders such as project manager, architects, contractors and service providers. There is immense value in ensuring that – while one takes into consideration aspects of geography, size, utility, occupants, etc, of a facility – there is a minimum standard of facilities and services that will be available at every facility and that it can be scaled up as felt necessary.

She further adds that there is a constant pressure on a facility managers to reduce costs without impacting services. One way to look at the cost–value proposition is to bring in value in areas where there is a possibility of adding value in addition to bringing costs down. And in cases where value is added through specialised expertise that has no cost element. This helps tilt the scales in cost-value segments and add to the brand image.”