Directing Change

ENCOURAGING EXPERTISE

She believes the role of a facilities services account manager is crucial in maintaining communication and ensuring good performance in outsourced contracts.

“As a business we made the strategic decision that our account managers would come from both a technical and operational background to deliver efficiencies to clients as they hold the technical skillset and understand how building assets operate. Account managers come from all trade background including, electrical, mechanical, HVAC and engineering.”

In practice this means Sensori Group account managers can progress through the company via a stream of projects, from working on sites as electrical site supervisors, HVAC specialists or building fabric specialists. Due to the business enabling these individuals to move sideways to learn the business, this has resulted in around 90 per cent of them being trade specialist qualified.

According to McCullagh the benefits of this approach are that staff bring a level of expertise when managing sophisticated new technologies, including BMS, the latest smart buildings, digital twins or IoT technology. This expertise enables a more positive impact in terms of an ESG improvement strategy.

“Within the hospitals we manage we have healthcare specialists who have worked within the healthcare industry for their entire career, and we base them there as on-site personnel, with their account manager also coming from a technical background. Then we might have our BMS specialist and if those people meet up onsite, they will understand how all those assets interact with each other to deliver greater efficiencies without the need to look externally to the in-house expertise.

“There’s no one set approach, as an energy management project in a commercial building is going to differ from one in a hospital or pharma plant. These must be approached differently, with experts that understand the needs of the clients, the occupants and the nature of the environment.”

TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT

McCullagh describes her leadership style as rooted in empathy, integrity, and a genuine focus on people and process, and this is reflected in her approach to training and development. She is keen to encourage more women to work successfully in FM – with the school-age recruitment programme a key part of this strategy.

“These recruits might start off as in an apprenticeship and within Sensori we show them that there are a multitude of roles that form part of facilities management and it’s important to educate potential newcomers on all the opportunities that the industry can offer,” she says.

Another way of creating a more gender diverse workforce is by supporting the work/life balance. While McCullagh says a lot of the team like seeing their colleagues in person, the firm also offer a hybrid model to employees enabling them to complete their job even if other commitments arise.

As the business expands into Europe the company is also meeting increased staff requests for CPD training: “There is huge support from our managing director and our management team that if somebody comes to you with an opportunity for CPD that will benefit both their career and the business, we support them on that.”

FUTURE PLANS

McCullagh is delighted to report that Sensori Group has achieved the accolade of “Overall excellence in Facilities Management” for three consecutive years. She intends to build on that success by being the specialist provider that people come to for sustainable and energy smart solutions, utilising innovations in BIM modelling, digital data twins and IoT sensors and smart building technology to meet client’s energy efficient goals.

“We have the data centre, FM and projects experience, and we now have the smart technology experience to be that one level of support for our clients.

“We’re building a team of sustainability experts, and we are trying to move some of our existing resources to upskill that model. We’ve gone the route of getting our ISO 50001 certification and have assisted other clients to achieve this certification.”

She explains that Sensori Group is working on building a repeat business model to grow with existing clients and are going to be able to move with them throughout their European operations. The data centre operation is a huge part of the strategy and is going to grow and build to bring the rest of the company alongside.

She concludes: “We started entering the data centre sector around two years ago, and our pipeline this year for data centre work would be €60 million of the €150 million of turnover forecast.

“The day-to-day business is around €90 million, so quite a significant leap and over the next few years we see huge scope to grow further in the data centre and FM sector.”