Introduction

The Smart Built Environment Awards 2023 on 05 October 2023 at Park Hyatt Dubai witnessed a flagbearer for community management advancement in the UAE - Nakheel Community Management (NCM), clinch the title of the Best Community Management of the Year. While Nakheel emerges as one of the region’s master developers, it remains one of the only Government-affiliated companies offering its customers the ‘built-to-sell’ model in the real estate sector. 

As the community management wing under the waterfront developer, NCM operates independently and manages a portfolio that scales the size of urban municipalities with its mix of waterways, reefs, beaches, land and sea destinations, and islands including The World, Palm Jumeirah and Dubai Islands. Nakheel Community Management also manages additional communities from the prestigious Meydan developments and an ever-expanding community scape and therefore, the differentiator for NCM is its forte in ‘city management’ with world-class community-centric services for its homeowners and residents. 

With a workforce of more than 200 highly skilled men and women, NCM manages some of Dubai’s most sought-after communities, accounting for over 19% of Dubai’s population. Winning the title for the second consecutive year, Nakheel Community Management employs innovation, technology, and international best practices while delivering professional community management services. The team keeps customers at the heart of everything as they foster an environment of community engagement through community events, neighbourhood campaigns, sustainability-driven drives, CSR and outreach. 

NCM AT A GLANCE 

• 18 master projects 
• 15,000 hectares of Master Developments 
• 300 kilometres of waterfront projects  
• Spread across 520 million square feet of built-up area 
• Home to more than 55,000 residential units
• 700,000 people living in the communities
• 400+ Owners’ Associations
• 4 Community Customer Happiness Centres

We sat down with the Chief Community Management Officer, Francis Giani at the new NCM headquarters in The Galleries, Downtown Jebel Ali for a fireside chat on how Nakheel Community Management has weaved in a sense of belonging among its residents, the mechanics of their self-sustained cities and what it takes to stay on top of the league.

How is Nakheel Community Management becoming a changemaker in UAE’S community management industry? 

Nakheel Community Management (NCM) has been in pursuit of operational excellence and customer satisfaction for the last three years and we have earned remarkable achievements and milestones on the way.  

In this pursuit of creating safer and more vibrant communities, Nakheel Communities is the only community management company in the UAE to obtain the BSI Kite Mark Certification – ISO 37106: Smart & Sustainable Communities. This certification for our flagship project – Palm Jumeirah highlights our dedication to building smart city operating models. Additionally, we are in contention for the Green Globes: Existing Building 2021 certification which benchmarks us based on building performance metrics of energy, water, waste, and emissions, giving us an added edge in sustainable operations and management. 

NCM is also the first and only community management company to have achieved the international WELL Health-Safety Rating for Facility Operations and Management for 365 buildings by the International WELL Building Institute. This is in addition to the two ISO certifications (ISO 14001:2015 for Environmental Management Systems and ISO 45001:2018 for Occupational Health and Safety) by TUV Middle East, emphasizing our commitment to environmental sustainability and occupational health and safety. 

In the realm of community end-to-end operations, we have spearheaded big and small community improvements encompassing landscaping, infrastructure, park development, signage, health and safety measures, lighting enhancements, and sustainability-focused initiatives – which reflects our focus on elevating the quality of life in our communities. 

An important part of this puzzle is our Customer Centre of Excellence – which aims at providing knowledge, leadership, governance, standardization, best practices, subject matter expertise, quality assurance, and performance management support across our community operations.  

Stakeholder engagement is also a top priority for NCM, and in an industry first, we introduced the NCM Service Provider Excellence Awards in 2023 to honour top-performing service providers across our vast communities. This is a platform to highlight groundbreaking efforts, outstanding projects, and creative solutions across Nakheel communities that have aided the development and prosperity of residents living there.  

Our industry relevance is more evident today than ever. We have a dedicated Compliance Officer who is instrumental in the community governance, operations and financial management of Master Communities and jointly owned properties. 

From a regional and international industry perspective, NCM is the only community manager to have a training hub in collaboration with the international body - Community Association Institute (CAI). This says a lot about how we look to hone our talent and give them the resources and training to make a mark personally and professionally in the community association management space. 

How does NCM go above and beyond the scope of community management to deliver happiness to its residents?

Customers are at the heart of everything we do. NCM’s three pillars are community-centricity, customer focus and technology-driven, and the ‘how’ and ‘what’ we do in the business come back to these key drivers. 

We recognise the importance of community bonding and have reinvested 25% of our company profits into the ‘community happiness’ budget. This pool of funds is dedicated to hosting a variety of events, including festive, CSR, sports, health and well-being, social, traditional, family-oriented and pet-centric activities. Our signature health and well-being series, "LiveWell with Nakheel," has seen 11 successful events over the last 12 months, touching on topics including men’s health, gut health, hair and skin, hormones and pain management to name a few, featuring local, regional and international experts sharing evidence-based knowledge. All these are tools to bring residents together, fostering a sense of belonging with an impressive event NPS score of 72.  (The Net Promoter Score or NPS measures customers' perceptions of Nakheel.)

When it comes to being attuned to the Voice of the Customer, we do this by actively engaging with over 400 owners' associations through frequent meetings, focus groups, coffee mornings and surveys. At NCM, we have a dedicated Customer Experience Centre that plays a crucial role in creating some of these exceptional interactions. This team’s priority is to make residents feel valued, heard, and supported at every interaction with an in-depth understanding of customer needs, by efficiently handling enquiries, complaints, and feedback.  

We have gone closer to our residents by way of our new community offices. In 2023, we opened three new dedicated community offices, giving residents the option to meet us within a 5km radius of their homes. 

I also think that in this constantly connected digital era, it is crucial to maintain effective and relevant communication with our residents. And so, we have leveraged our social media channels to draw that connection. Be it an event teaser, bite-sized tips for home maintenance, our success stories, or community living through the eyes of our residents – we have a tailored content-rich approach on our Nakheel Communities pages that has taken our engagement levels up by a significant margin.  

Community management is a two-way street and we ensure that NCM remains a responsive and customer-centric organization.

How is NCM pushing ahead of its peers in employing or integrating technology in running ground operations and improving residents' experience? 

Nakheel Community Management is at the forefront of employing and integrating cutting-edge technology to enhance ground operations and elevate the overall residents' experience. We are pushing ahead of our peers with specialised integrated community management systems that encompass facilities management, complaint tracking, and billing services. Our built-for-purpose system is tailored to meet the unique needs of the communities we manage. 

In our pursuit of excellence, we have been championing IoT projects in waste management, lake maintenance, pest control among others, to keep our communities smarter, safer, cleaner and sustainable.  

For our customers, the digital shift came in with a dedicated mobile application that provided them with easy access to essential community information, to booking their amenities, requesting access cards, renting storage lockers, facilitating service requests, and making online payments. This is especially significant for us at Nakheel Communities, as we saw a notable 87% of payments were made online by residents, keeping us on track with the Smart City initiative of the Dubai Government. 

Dubai is touted to be one of the happiest cities in the world. How is NCM surpassing customer happiness expectations?

Our strategic initiative is designed to create vibrant, well-managed communities where resident happiness extends beyond basic services. Nakheel’s vision is set on ‘Building Happiness and Prosperity’, and we are looking at ‘Creating Brand Advocacy and Loyalty’. We have taken a two-fold approach through sport and sustainability to stay ahead of the curve. 

I am proud to share that NCM has been the Presenting Partner for the Emirates Dubai 7s Netball Tournament for the second year running, as part of a five-year collaboration. This aligns with our common goal to promote healthy lifestyles through sport, thus establishing Nakheel Communities as the ‘Home of Netball’. We’ve gone a step ahead and we are today, the main sponsor of the UAE Netball Federation, which is the national governing body of netball within the Emirates. On the lines of these ventures, we broke ground in December 2023 to commence the construction of six netball courts in one of our communities. This will become a focal point for residents and sports enthusiasts, fostering a sense of community and shared enthusiasm for netball.

In another milestone, we signed a MoU with Etisalat Services Holding, e& to install EV chargers across Nakheel communities. Through this partnership, we are committed to enriching consumer value propositions and creating value additions with our resident base. We also employ electric vehicles for our community patrolling and community missions for everyday site operations, emergency responses, and site visits. The underlines Nakheel’s value of “We Serve”, by always providing the best service possible to our customers and driving innovation in their communities.

Promising days, months in the year ahead for NCM? Any exciting milestones you can let us in on? 

An insightful question, indeed! 

The future is bright and promising (cheerfully points towards the Palm Jebel Ali development from his Galleries office). 

We are expanding our portfolio in Dubai’s Happiest Residential Community – the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City District One. As part of our recent agreements, we are setting foot into a new phase in the development and expecting an imminent handover of a bulk of units. We are also expecting more communities in the Al Furjan and Dubai Islands developments that have significantly augmented our community portfolio.  

The green card of sustainability in the built environment is more important to us than ever.  We have built an ESG strategy which has been developed as a roadmap and commitment to guide our sustainability journey, in line with UAE’s sustainability agenda and the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. 

At NCM, we firmly believe in the correlation between happy employees and satisfied customers. Our workforce, now standing at 216 employees with a notable Emiratisation rate of 29% reflects our commitment to local talent. We’ve been upskilling our team across the board in M100, M203 and LEED Green certifications – this includes teammates from community operations, security, finance, customer care, safety and marketing. This equips every NCMer with a foundation in community association management and paves the way forward in community leadership. I’m especially excited about the most recent CAI training hub within NCM, which gives us an edge and opens great opportunities for NCM in the months ahead.   

All this and more make us what we are - A great place to work, the Best Community Management company, we have the Happiest Residential Communities and have been commended internationally for our business change and transformation.