Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa November 2013 | Page 46

MANAGING BY SAXEN VAN COLLER Managing And Maintenance Is essential to your industrial property P roperty management covers certain practical areas of responsibility. These include tenant management; financial and marketing solutions and facilities management as well as overall operational systems. These areas of responsibility are fundamental in ensuring that properties generate continuous revenue streams through timeous rental collections from value adding tenant groups; are maintained through seamless facilities management; and that risk factors are identified and mitigation measures adopted at infant stages in the process. It is therefore necessary to understand and appreciate needs, preferences and the core business of tenants. In order to deliver value to tenants and visa versa, strong Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is therefore critical. This assessment is crucial to the preparation and management of tenant contracts and prov iding c lea r communication on the business response to new developments in their industry. Similarly, another key factor to tenant management is the prompt response to facilities maintenance request, with updates on progress. Precise implementation of these tasks allows the business to monitor and measure tenant satisfaction which, in turn, contributes to business improvement by offering an operational indication of how properties are performing in comparison to similar industries in the surrounding vicinity of the business precinct. Creating a solid understanding of the performance of similar industries in the surrounding vicinity of the business precinct is also important to ascertain how the market is influencing rental rates and service provision to tenants. This in turn provides a competitive advantage for the organisation by demonstrating understanding of its own value chain. In addition, this provides a good platform for marketing, promotional and advertising 42 November 2013 SA Real Estate Investor opportunities to capitalise on achieving 100% occupancy and rental recovery. However, in order to keep tenants satisf ied and generate continuous revenue streams it is essential for the business to ensure that building structures and fixed installations are not only operating optimally but eff iciently by reducing downtime and providing a proper Operational Strategy for all the precincts. This component of facilities management is therefore crucial in achieving the abovementioned objectives. Dube TradePort is a 2 040-hectare masterplanned development. This world-class passenger and airfreight hub, encircling King Shaka International Airport, has become a highly competitive business-operating environment, comprising four development zones, one of which is the sprawling Dube TradeZone which is a specialist precinct with premium fully-serviced airside real estate, ideal for newgeneration warehousing, manufacturing, assembling, air-related cargo distribution, hightech aerospace services, automotive industries, clothing, textiles and cold storage. The crucial lessons at Dube TradePort have been that managing and maintaining industrial property centres on customer relationship management. At Dube TradePort contracts/service level agreements (SLAs) are concluded with third party service providers along a wide range of hard and soft services. Cleaning and hygiene, waste management and pest control form part of the soft services group and these services are conducted daily, across the precinct. Hard services relate to the maintenance of generators, elevators, fire systems, roller shutter doors, utilities and HVACR systems. These services are scheduled and delivered monthly, quarterly, bi-annually and/or annually depending on the legislative and business requirements. General building maintenance is catered for under a facilities maintenance contract, which is a more reactive response to achieving the overall facilities management targets. This further provides the platform for identifying opportunities for improvement of maintenance processes and practices to produce more successful performance. Against this background, it provides opportunities for strategic alliances and training for internal personnel. An active planned, preventative maintenance schedule is linked directly to the business performance targets and it is therefore imperative for the facilities and operations contracts management division of the business to ensure that all planned maintenance exercises are conducted timeously and meticulously. Key to this function is stakeholder management and management of relationships with service providers; budgeting and budget forecasting for the duration of the contracts/SLAs; monitoring the levels and quality of service provision and compliance in regard to legislative requirements. Well-maintained properties through optimal facilities management - maintenance of all hard and soft services - are therefore fundamental to retaining tenants and establishing a continuous revenue generation streams. 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