Grapevine

22^nd November 2019

Got a story for us? Please send news stories & press releases to: grapevine@twinfm.com

Creating Value In Building Technologies

Join the Smart Building Technologies Summit 2019 to share case studies and best practices with over 120 industry peers - November 27.

There will be some top level speakers and panel discussions will include Where is the Value in Building Technology Innovation?; Space, Agility and Wellbeing - the Role of Tech; Pilot Projects to Value Delivery - Mastering IoT Tech Adoption; and Maximising the Value of Mobile Apps in Real Estate.

For the Event Page - Click Here

London Build And EMEX

Why has everyone chosen November 27 as the date to do stuff?

London Build takes place at Olympia on 28-27 and boasts a beer and gin festival as part of the goings-on.

Build2Perform Live, the largest gathering of experts in building performance takes place on 26 & 27 November..again at London's Olympia.

And then it's off to ExCel for EMEX the energy management expo, stopping off at the Smart Building Technologies Summit 2019 along the way.

I will try to multi-task the events and the gin, I think...in preparation of my liver for the big one the following day.

Less Than One Week to Go

ThisWeekinFM's Festive Season Lunch will take place on Thursday November 28. This party is going to be a cracker - so make sure you grab your ticket NOW.

To see the event page for details and booking options - Click Here

Guide M Life Tables Launch

Thursday 5 December - 6:00pm-8:00pm

The CIBSE FM Group are launching their Guide M Life Tables which have been developed to align with RICS costing and BESA SFG20 maintenance task schedules and offer life expectancies for a range of building services plant.

Venue: Bouygues, 1 Lambeth Palace Road, Waterloo, London SE1 7EU - arrivals from 5:30pm.

The Closing Date For Registration Is December 3 - To Register - Click Here

Hair Raze

I know it's cold out there but surely a Park Lane hotel can afford to bump the heating up?

One resident of an apartment on the sixth floor (yes the most expensive room in London) used a hairdryer to warm a bed up - and caused a fire.

Around 150 hotel guests and ten staff evacuated the building before the Fire Brigade arrived.

London Fire Brigade Station Officer Oliver Stallworthy said: “The evenings may be getting colder but it is never a good idea to use a hairdryer to warm your bed up. The man was extremely lucky that he woke up before the bed completely caught fire. He tackled the fire himself and went back to sleep in the living room. Thankfully we were called and made sure the fire was fully extinguished."

Poor Air Quality On The London Underground

The London Assembly Environment Committee has started an investigation on tube dust. Chair of the Committee, Caroline Russell AM said:

“While we heard TfL is meeting current standards to protect workers’ respiratory health on the underground, we are challenging how confident TfL is with these standards, especially as they are lower than the World Health Organisation’s guidelines.

“TfL relies on people to clean and minimise tube dust on the London Underground. The RMT Trade Union told the Environment Committee that the cleaners’ exposure to dust and pollution is not monitored, as cleaners are not directly contracted by TfL. This raises concerns as TfL needs to be aware of the impact of poor air quality on all staff working on the Underground.

“The Environment Committee will publish its findings on tube dust once the ongoing investigation is finished but, in the meantime, we’ll be keeping a close eye on TfL’s response to recent investigation findings,” concluded Russell.

City Airport Takes Off

London City Airport has extended Mitie’s security contract for another two years.

Mitie’s Security division will help protect the 5 million passengers that pass through the airport annually.

64 employees working on the contract have been uplifted to London Living Wage.

Mitie will continue to provide behind the scenes security services by screening thousands of baggage items every day.

Passenger assistance is also an important part of the security service provided. Over 20,000 disabled passengers are transported directly from the curb side through to the aircraft every year.

White Flight

Interserve has announced that Debbie White will step down from her role as Chief Executive Officer as of 31 December 2019, having outlined her intention to leave the company in March 2019.

Her decision to step down followed the delivery of the company’s deleveraging programme - also known as a Phoenix which saw the Interserve Group Limited survive unscathed but with most shareholders in the holding company lose their money.

The Group devolve the Chief Executive’s Office role so that there is one for each of Interserve Group's three divisions with Mark Morris, currently Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer, assuming the role overseeing all Group functions.

White Bites

Lisa White has bitten on the opportunity to become Vice President of People for the EMEA regions of CBRE’s Global Workplace Solutions (GWS) business Global real estate advisor.

White joins from Lendlease, where she held the role of Global Head of Culture and Head of HR Europe. She has extensive HR and commercial leadership expertise, gained across a range of sectors including insurance, banking and construction. White has held a variety of leadership roles in Europe and has been based internationally, having relocated to Australia for a three-year period as Global Head of Talent at Lendlease.

Finding His Compass

Robin Mills has been appointed Managing Director for Compass Group UK & Ireland effective from 25 November 2019. Mills, currently Group Chief People Officer for Compass Group PLC, will replace Chris Garside.

Prior to his role at Group, Mills was Managing Director for Compass Group's education business Chartwells, and previously held the role of HR Director for the UK & Ireland.

Corporate Ethical Mark

Atalian Servest have kept their CIPS Corporate Ethical Mark accreditation for a third successive year.

Atalian is one of 59 companies worldwide to achieve the accreditation from the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply.

They join the likes of the NHS England, John Lewis and Heineken UK. All 59 companies have taken proactive steps in the last 12 months to safeguard against unethical conduct in procurement and supply management.

Wx Up

Sodexo has announced details of its corp-up Wx, a consultancy specialising in workplace experience design.

Wx helps organisations to quantify and improve their workplace experience - an approach structured around two pillars: data measurement & analysis and ethnography. The measurement and collection of data allows for a significant reduction in spatial footprint as well as superior collaboration, it is claimed.

Yannick Villar, CEO & co-founder of Wx said: “The goal is for Wx to become a leading name in workspace digitalisation, helping companies to quantify and improve the user experience in office spaces through ethnography, IoT, and data."

Best Young Talent Award

Tom Martin, residency living manager for Student Living by Sodexo, won The Class Best Young Talent Award at the third annual Best in Class Awards on November 6.

Martin has helped to make the student experience at Northumbria University an easier and more inclusive one. He has introduced an online parcel management system, an online inventory system, and a Student Living by Sodexo App supporting market trends and the new generation of students.

By engaging with students through social events, two-way feedback and market research, Martin has been able to design a residency living blue print which has been shared across the Sodexo business to bring consistency and best practice to all of Sodexo’s student residency programmes.

Employee Engagement Award Nomination

Axis Group, the security, cleaning, front-of-house and support services organisations, has been selected as a finalist in the Institute of Customer Service’s UK ‘Customer Satisfaction Awards’ for the Employee Engagement Strategy category.

The nomination is in recognition of Axis Group’s people strategy, launched in 2015, with nine distinct business components. Reward and recognition programmes, CSR initiatives, communication and Axis Group’s employee portal are all tools Axis uses to further employee engagement and satisfaction. The company also offers counselling, health and financial wellbeing initiatives, all of which have helped to increase staff retention by 20% in just four years.

Security At Walsall College

Walsall College has renewed their security partnership with Corps Security.

Corps Security has been re-awarded its contract with Walsall College for a further five years following a competitive tender.

The ongoing partnership involves static guarding, control room management, patrolling, front-of-house and student services assistance across all four campuses.

Security Guarding Company of the Year

Amulet, part of the wider Churchill Group, has been named winner in the ‘Security Guarding Company of the Year over £25m Turnover’ category at the Security and Fire Excellence Awards 2019 at the Hilton, Park Lane, London, held this week.

The award win was judged on the company’s performance, transformational approach to delivering security solutions, commitment to training, examples of contracts under current management, employee loyalty, high retention, developmental culture and Corporate Social Responsibility efforts, Amulet is delighted to have been named the winner of this prestigious award.

ENGIE Named Best Sustainable FM Company In The UK

Energy and support services specialist ENGIE UK & Ireland has come out on top in the Sustainable Facilities Management Index (SFMI) Awards for a second successive year.

ENGIE achieved a platinum grade and the top SFMI score overall for 2019.

Mitie, which acquired a silver grade, has received the Rising Star Award in recognition of its growing commitment to sustainable FM practice.

Other platinum-scoring FM service providers include Skanska Facilities and VINCI Facilities, while Bouygues Energies and Services and BAM FM achieved gold classification.

Now in its seventh year, the SFMI is run by sustainability consultancy Acclaro Advisory. As the only sustainability benchmark for the UK FM sector, the SFMI judges the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of FM service providers annually, Acclaro’s team conducts independent assessments across 23 criteria including sustainability frameworks, management systems, energy, water, compliance, health & safety, employee development, diversity and more.

The findings from this year’s assessments reveal mixed results:

A three-tier structure to sustainable FM service provision has emerged in the UK market. The leading companies continue to demonstrate an ability to integrate their services into a holistic sustainability strategy. In the middle bracket, companies are providing traditional FM service well but struggle to integrate into strategic sustainability. At the lower end of the scale, efforts to integrate with sustainability are superseded by the need to deliver at the cheapest possible cost.

Average ESG performance of the leading FM companies on the SFMI continued to rise this year. This group demonstrates shared strategies such as leadership from the board, rigorous sustainability and social value frameworks, forecasting, collaborations and financial commitment.

On average, the sustainability performance of FM companies that do not engage with the SFMI continues to decline (the SFMI judges the information that these companies have made publicly available).

Water management and energy management scores have decreased by an average of 5% and 1% respectively from 2018.

Only 8% of companies use purchasing power to engage and motivate suppliers to reduce ESG impacts, while 31% require minimum certification from suppliers before entering their supply chain.

Areas receiving significant public attention in recent years have experienced a notable rise in scores. Since 2018, scores for sustainable communities (social value), wellbeing, circular economy, and diversity have all increased. However, much of this movement occurred in the lower quartiles of the SFMI and not in the upper levels, where Acclaro Advisory made scoring more stringent. This suggests that a number of FM companies are making an effort to tackle ‘PR-friendly’ sustainability issues but not yet developing the sustainability frameworks to drive real change.

85% of companies included plastic reductions in some form of publicity, but no companies were able to show a circular economy business model at this stage.

Chris Havers, programme director of the SFMI for Acclaro Advisory, said: “We would like to congratulate ENGIE for winning the SFMI Awards for a second straight year. This feat demonstrates the organisation’s incredible commitment to sustainable FM and should act as a benchmark for any other FM service providers that have serious ambitions around their own sustainable development. The level of accountability that ENGIE has fostered within its teams through responsible business KPIs, a scrutiny board and its sustainability framework is an example that others can follow.

This year’s results can be found in the SFMI 2019 Summary Report. To download the document - Click Here

15^th November 2019

Is Unhappiness The Secret To Happiness?

Unhappiness is one of the best ways of finding true happiness - Grapevine reported last week.

Now you can read the full story - Click Here

Crackers

I was interested to learn recently that Waitrose and John Lewis are to stop selling Christmas crackers containing plastic toys from 2020.

The crackers will also not have glitter on them unless a non-plastic version can be sourced.

More retailers are expected to join in.

ThisWeekinFM's Festive Lunch will avoid the plastic too (apart from the tree which gets re-used every year.) This will be the event of the season - You'd be crackers to miss it.

To see the event page for details and booking options - Click Here

Mental Health Event

Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing are hosting a mental health event exclusively for the construction sector on November 21.

Expert speakers will include David White (Director of Assurance, Galliford Try) and Sandra Winters (Occupational Health and Workforce Wellbeing Manager, Costain Skanska HS2 EWC).

For details - Click Here

Guide M Life Tables Launch

Thursday 5 December - 6:00pm-8:00pm

Venue: Bouygues, 1 Lambeth Palace Road, Waterloo, London SE1 7EU - arrivals from 5:30pm.

The Closing Date For Registration Is December 3 - To Register - Click Here

Social Impact Awards

It has been a few weeks since RICS launched their Social Impact Awards with a closing date for entries in January.

31 January 2020 is the cut-off date. An Early Bird Rate of £85 (plus VAT) is available for projects entered by 29 November 2019.

Various sponsorship packages are available too. Find out more and enter at www.rics.org/awards.

The Social Impact Awards will recognise the positive and transformational contribution that the built environment has on people’s lives across the UK.

Enter The Dragons

The Cleaning Support Services Association’s (CSSA) 2020 Innovation Showcase will see businesses and organisations operating throughout the cleaning industry invited to present their innovative products, services and initiatives to a ‘Dragon’s Den’ panel of industry experts on Thursday 19 March 2020.

The final winner will be selected by a ballot of the delegates attending the Innovation Showcase and announced on the day.

To be eligible the product, service or initiative must have been launched since the 1 January 2018 (i.e. since the inaugural Innovation Showcase) and may be applicable to any area of the cleaning industry.

The deadline for entries is 20 December 2019 and entries are free. www.cssa-uk.co.uk

Rising Stars Trek To NexGen Awards

The UK’s rising stars in the commercial property sector have trekked into London to be recognised at the British Council for Offices’ fourth annual NextGen Awards ceremony

To read the full story - Click Here

See, Check and Notify Training FREE

The See, Check and Notify free security training package empowers staff to help protect your organisation from a range of threats say NaCTSO and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure.

See, Check and Notify (SCaN) aims to help businesses and organisations maximise safety and security using their existing resources.

To read the full story - Click Here