In the first quarter of 2022, the area offered by the modern office market in Budapest totalled at 4 million square metres. This is the reason why portfolio.hu has asked facility management experts about this topic and published an article by the title “Now, Our Life Is at Stake! – The Next 10 Years Are Unpredictable in the Real Estate Market”.
Portfolio had been waiting for nearly one year for the moment to see when and with whose project they would be able to announce that “We’ve got it! We have exceeded 4 million”.
Naturally, consultants, who had ensured the constant development of the domestic office market by concluding contracts as well as making lease and purchase transactions, were also looking forward to this day.
THE EXPERIENCES OF THE FACILITY MANAGEMENT PROFESSION
Who could be more knowledgeable about the domestic office market than the experts who see the office buildings being built up and know every corner of them, thus contributing to making office complexes functional, and useful and liveable workplaces.
“In the FM profession, one of the most important events of the past decade in Hungary was the establishment of the National Association of Facility Management Service Providers and Building Operators (LEO) – answered László Vágó, CEO of NEO Property Services Zrt. to portfolio.hu’s question and added: LEO was founded in 2013 by 13 companies having extensive experience and a significant share in the FM market. Today it has 19 permanent and 21 supporting members. LEO plays a key role in promoting the popularity and recognition of the FM profession. Now, more and more ‘civilians’ know that the ‘FM’ acronym on the side of service cars means Facility Management. We are proud that we are one of the 13 founding companies and take an active part in LEO’s activities.”
CSABA SZIJ, deputy ceo of B+N REFERENCIA ZRT.
“The emergence of innovation and technological progress has been one of the dominant trends in facility management in the past years. Today, research & development is an essential part of everyday operations. We are moving away from past routines when all we did was cleaning, taking care of the cleanliness of offices. As market leaders, we are at the forefront of innovating this industry. One of the technological innovations of our R&D unit having a staff of 20 people is our autonomous cleaning robot called ROBIN which is used for keeping larger areas, corridors and halls in office buildings clean. The equipment calculates the path to be followed in the area to be cleaned according to a pre-programmed cleaning map. It does not fully substitute for manual cleaning, however our colleagues using ROBIN can focus more on tasks that cannot be made automatic. An important gain of this development project is that now, with the help of this device, cleaning can be monitored. This means that you will always know the Whens, Whats and Hows about the cleaning performance of your robot. Another ‘invention’ of the recent past in this industry is the collection and procesing of data. This takes our classical service portfolio to another level. It is a major competitive advantage for us that we can foretell trends by acquiring and analysing data. What can be expected about the service life and proper functioning of a given appliance? What is it that you need to pay attention to in connection with the various integrated technologies?
Also, the office market has gone through heavy digitalisation in the past 10 years. ‘E-cleaning’ is a smartphone application which takes services to the next level and supports quality assurance. With its help, you can monitor the quality of cleaning. It is based on the following concept: our colleague can easily see what tasks need to be carried out in each room on that day. In some rooms, it is complete cleaning, while in others, only the waste bins need to be emptied. The customer can check at any time if the requested service was rendered or not. This monitoring and supporting system is already in use in some office buildings and, in the near future, we are going to launch it with other contracted partners of ours” – said Csaba Szij, Deputy CEO of B+N Referencia Zrt. to portfolio.hu.
NEW TREND IN OFFICE ENVIRONMENT: EXPERIENCE
The expert of B+N Referencia Zrt. told Portfolio that “it is a new trend in office environment that facility management companies have started paying attention to ‘experience’. A number of new services are now offered to tenants, from yoga classes and massage sessions to tailoring and café services. The fact that the representatives of generation Y have entered the labour market is another step into this direction. Their attitude is different from that of older generations in many respects. For them, besides the aforementioned convenience services, environmental consciousness, energy conservation and the reduction of our carbon footprint are also important. This means a new kind of challenge for us” – said Csaba Szij.