Atul Jagtap, Senior Business Support Specialist – Administration and Facilities at Fujitsu India
Slowly but surely, the hybrid work model has become the norm for the IT sector. With an ever-changing mix of employees showing up to work daily in fully air-conditioned buildings that need to be functional around the clock, the FM team has its hands full.
Atul Jagtap is Senior Business Support Specialist – Administration and Facilities at Fujitsu India; Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation. In this article, he double-clicks on every minute aspect of smart campus management.
The Pune campus
The 11 acre campus consists of six ground-plus-three buildings with a total indoor area of 3 lakh sq ft. The total outdoor area is 4 lakh sq ft.
Of a total employee strength of 5,000, around 3,000 employees work from office on any given day: 2,500 during the day and 500 during the night shift. Around 40 FM employees are needed daily.
Monitoring traffic
The in-time for employee buses is 9 am every morning; before this, the reception area, corridors, washrooms, desks and chairs need to be made clean. But this cleaning process needs to be repeated during the day; most housekeeping teams don’t do this. If they do, we can give a ‘wow’ feeling to facility users.
The time before and after lunch, as well as when employees sign out at the end of the day, are also high-traffic times. Depending upon the size of washrooms and footfall, we deploy the requisite amount of manpower. Currently, we get a rough estimate of washroom traffic; we have tried out a footfall counter for washrooms, which has worked well.
Hot-desking
Since we are working in hybrid mode, employees use an app to book their desk for the day. From this app, we gather numbers about how many employees can be expected at the office on a particular day, including which buildings, floors and areas will be most occupied. Our FM requirements and required resources are calculated accordingly.
Washroom cleaning
Every WC needs to be cleaned after each use; a janitor monitors usage. The housekeeping team sprays down a WC with disinfectant after each user. The top of the WC is cleaned and then washed with water; a seat sanitising chemical is then applied. For cleaning a 4 ft x 5 ft WC, five minutes are more than enough.
Brushes are used for regular cleaning. A wet mop and floor brush are used for a deep wash of the washroom every night, and once a week, a single disc machine is used for deep cleaning of washroom floors.
Automatic dispensers
All water taps are sensor-activated. When an employee uses a manual dispenser of hand soap, there is a tendency to press it two-three times. Apart from consuming more liquid, this practice can also harm the internal mechanism of the machine and impair its life-span. We have only automated dispensers across the facility.
I have seen a demonstration of an IoT-linked dispenser which generates mobile alerts when the level of the hand soap falls; the housekeeping supervisor can then go and refill the unit. We plan to implement this soon.
Odour monitors
These devices alerts us when the odour in a particular washroom crosses certain levels; a janitor can then be sent for immediate cleanup.
With this system, the need for manpower can be reduced by 50% or more. Because instead of cleaning a washroom every half an hour, we can smartly deploy manpower for cleaning only when needed. We save on manpower costs, and the same manpower can be deployed elsewhere.
QR codes
Previously, we had physical checklists stuck in washrooms, where a janitor would show up at a particular time and ‘tick’ the boxes. Now, he can scan the QR code attached in each washroom to generate a digital checklist on his phone, and mark each area part (mirror, WC, urinal etc) of a washroom that has been cleaned by him.
This has threefold advantages: It helps us go paperless, saves time by going digital, and gives us real-time data about the state of cleaning.
Work area cleaning
All desks and chairs are sanitised before work starts every morning. All employees have been given laptops of their own; no desktops need to be sanitised anymore.
Wet mopping of the floor needs to be done three or more times a day. During the work day, this can be done when employees from a particular area go to lunch.
Common area cleaning
Cleaning the reception area is critical to make a good first impression. The reception
and corridors are cleaned daily using wet mops and dry mops; auto scrubbers are deployed once a week.
What qualities would you expect in a housekeeping service provider?
They need to have properly trained ground staff and knowledgeable housekeeping supervisors. All members of their team should know what chemical to use, where, and how. For example, glass cleaning chemicals are supposed to be used undiluted; if diluted, the glass won’t be properly cleaned.
We also need personnel who can multitask. A housekeeping person should ideally also know how to paint a wall, tighten the screw of a chair and perform other minor tasks.
Food services
Many IT sector employees live alone, or away from their families. We make sure that every employee gets breakfast as soon as he or she reaches work.
The pantry area has water coolers, coffee machines and consumables for the latter; spills need to be cleaned up immediately. The kitchen sink for empty cups also needs to be emptied often.
Waste management
The main streams of waste are garden waste, food waste, washroom waste and e-waste. An on-site organic waste converter processes the first two categories; authorised vendors and recyclers are contracted to take away and dispose of the rest as per rules.
Vendor selection
We have the same vendor for FM across India; this simplifies invoicing, coordination and compliance with labour laws. The same level of service is expected at every location.
