IFMA session on World Workplace India

The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) India organised a conference programme on 16th March 2018 at JW Marriot Juhu Mumbai. The subject matter of the conference was on “Workplace of and for the new millennium.” Alongside the conference, there was a small exhibition where the sponsors demonstrated their products.

William O Neill, Chairman IFMA International Board, opened the conference with a small presentation introducing his Board of Directors and showing his company’s credentials which had around 24,000 members, out of which 72% had FMP and consisted four competencies of 11 that IFMA has stating the impact of FMP on the globe. “We are really excited about our five-year collaboration with RICS” said William.

Amol Shimpi MRICS, Associate Dean and Director, School of Real Estate, RICS, gave his opening keynote address along with a presentation on Future Trends on Future Cities. He spoke about the current and future trends in facility management services and how will it change the future was described by him.

Ashish Podar, CBRE – Sr Director, Global Workplace Solutions, Enterprise Facilities Management, was the speaker for the first session which was on ‘Trends in transition management: lost between project management & FM.’ Session two was on ‘Top trends impacting CRE in India,’ where Ravi Ahuja, Senior Executive Director Mumbai & Developer Services Colliers, gave his insights with a presentation. Following the presentation, was press and panel discussion which included Ravi Ahuja, Amit Ramani, Charu Thapar and N C Somaiah.

Session three’s topic on ‘The new era of Facility Services Management: From Buildings to human centricity’ was covered by Rajat Malhotra, COO JLL IFM West Asia. He highlighted on the fact of workplace being more than just a property where people would not just work, but also crave to come to work. Followed by this session, was another presentation by Gautam Madan, Honeywell Building Automation, on the topic ‘From buildings to human centricity’ Building Automation systems.’

Mark Powell, Executive Director of Product Development, RICS, spoke on the topic ‘Rising the bar 3’ which emphasized on reviews the current state of the FM industry and to enhance the strategic role of facility management. Barun Agarwal, ISHRAE, spoke on ‘Employee Health (Indoor Air Quality)’ in session five which also followed by a press and panel discussion. Keith Monterio was the moderator along with Sudhir Pillai, Dr Kamlesh Pandey and Ritu Sharma were the panel members.

The evening session six, was on ‘IOT & AI in FM’ on which Vishal Mani, MCS Solutions, gave his thoughts. The panel discussion on the topic was moderated by Padmanabhan Kannan, and the panel members were Dr Shakti Chauhan, Rajashekar and Nakul Subramanyam.

The final session was addressed by Ty Fastovsky, Trancent Singapore, on the topic ‘FM Outsourcing: Best practices and Next Generation Trends.’