Ralf Zerenner, Managing Director, Berkeley Services

Renewal of majority of their contracts from major long-time customers like Burj Khalifa, Emirates/DNATA, Al Tayer Group, Atlantis Hotel, etc. showcases the trust the customers have in the quality of services that they provide. The fact that they have been able to achieve all this and more, and remain consistent is what makes Berkeley Services an influential company.

Ralf Zerenner, Managing Director, Berkeley Services, elaborates on the initiatives, key highlights, and the vision for the company in the coming year.

COVID-19 Initiatives

Berkeley Services is known to look after the welfare of the staff. We ensured that though some of the employees were without work, they were given a salary. As a result we did not have much difficulty in remobilizing the resources when the situation started relaxing a bit.

Berkeley Services has initiated several steps to ensure that the staff and clients are well-protected.

The steps initiated included: 

• The company was approved by Dubai Municipality to perform sanitisation activities. Based on this, a sanitisation team was formed to provide services to our properties and client’s properties. 
• A comprehensive BCP was established and implemented across all locations. 
• Sanitisers were placed in all facilities including our clients’. 
• Face masks and other related PPE was provided to all our staff.
• Constant awareness programs were conducted. 
• Several training programs were given to our supervisors so that they could cover all areas in a short time.
• Special quarantine rooms and isolation rooms were created. 
• We had conducted sanitisation drives to all our customers, and they were incredibly happy with the response time.
• Enrolled with ISSA and actively participated with management training and a special focus on combating Covid-19

2020 Highlights

We witnessed several highlights, some of which are as follows: 

• Renewal of Burj Khalifa and Emirates/DNATA project for another three years.
• Winning a three-year contract for Security Services to Dubai Waterfront properties 
• Winning a three-year contract for HVAC services to the Engineer’s Office
• Winning a three-year IFM contract for Yas Village (Miral Group) in Abu Dhabi 
• Winning Housekeeping contracts in several major hotel chains

Vision 2021

The year 2021 is going to be a challenging year for the FM industry as the market is taking its time to come back to normalcy from the COVID-19 impact.

Berkeley Services will be focusing on placing more efforts in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi as we are witnessing the completion of several new upscale projects, inquiries are coming in, and we will take advantage of the situation.

We plan to consolidate our situation in the rest of the Emirates and keep our base strong. This will empower us to take more risks.

We are also exploring opportunities for Self-Deliver Services, which form part of the IFM services. We intend to be active with these services by the first quarter of 2021.