Andrew Law, is the Executive Director of Inspire Integrated, part of iFM Holdings a subsidiary of Eltizam Group. Andrew heads the FM operations with his extensive knowledge of the UK and the Middle East’s FM sectors. Andrew speaks about his mission, leading the team, and managing some landmark facilities across the UAE.

Q. What is the mission that you have taken on as the Executive Director at Inspire Integrated? How far have you come since establishing this goal?

Initially, Inspire Integrated was a single FM company which was wholly purchased by Eltizam in July 2021 to add to the other FM companies already operating under the Eltizam banner, these being Tafawuq FM and Fixis Technical Services. In 2022 Al Qudra FM was added to the iFM portfolio and a decision was taken by the Board to merge all companies into one name within the FM market place. Tafawuq and Al Qudra have already been rebranded as Inspire Integrated with Fixis to follow in Q1 2023.

So, my primary mission as it were, has been to integrate these four companies into a single operating entity with as minimal effect to the clients and staff as possible.

Phase 1 of this project was the re-branding of Tafawuq and Al Qudra FM with updated Trade Licenses, new email ID’s for all users, staff uniform changes etc., with Phase 2 being the novation of client contracts to the Inspire name. 

The internal communication of these significant changes was given to staff via roadshows in our Dubai & Abu Dhabi offices hosted by myself and iFM Holding’s CEO, Mohammed Alsharaf, to ensure effective and accurate communication was delivered to our front-end operations staff.

Behind the scenes of this exercise, huge support was provided by our internal centralised departments such as Commercial, Finance, HR, Marketing, IT, Procurement etc. and was facilitated by our Strategy & Planning team.

The transition has been a remarkable success so far and the integration of Fixis will complete the whole exercise very shortly.

Q. What are the the leadership principles you apply when leading your team at Inspire Integrated? Please provide anecdotal evidence.

Inspire’s FM projects vary greatly, for example we have a nuclear power station, an aviation engineering centre maintaining airplanes up to the size of A380’s, an internationally recognised museum, several high technology commercial office towers which include data centres, huge horizontal and vertical residential communities and almost everything in between.

This has given rise to an extremely varied skills and experience base within the Inspire operational teams coupled with a strong multicultural demographic.

Therefore, the principles I have applied to managing operations teams since arriving in the GCC in 2007, sit around clear outward communication, an acknowledgement of understanding downstream and then providing any required hands-on support when requested.

As an example, in 2020 we had a catastrophic failure of both roof-mounted chillers at one of our residential towers in Dubai Marina at 7am in the morning, on a weekend day and at the height of the summer heat and humidity. I live in Abu Dhabi but headed straight to Dubai and worked with the operations team to quickly mobilise temporary chillers and pumps, arrange approvals with Emaar for their placement on Marina Walkway, install temporary chilled water connections to the system via welded flanges, connect the temporary chillers and pumps and rebalance the system, as the original design intent was roof pumping and they were now on ground floor level. 

We were all on-site for more than 30 hours continuous with no sleep to re-establish cooling to the residents, but even in this high-pressure environment the discussions we had surrounding the problem, determining what was the best solution, the communication between us during the course of the works surrounding who does what and when were a credit to everybody involved.

The output in this case was that operations team were thankful of the senior support provided,  however, the company and the residents benefited as a whole as a result of the true teamwork approach.

Note: The chillers were fully refurbished with modern energy efficient replacement parts and the temporary chillers were disconnected in a low stress environment. 

Q. Inspire Integrated manages some landmark facilities across the UAE. Could you tell us about the most complex ones – operationally and strategically – and how did you plan and execute them?

As highlighted above, Inspire has several high-profile FM projects within its portfolio, they include:

Marina Square Master Community, Abu Dhabi: Marina Square was the flagship community that launched Reem Island and it has been with Inspire since handover. There are nearly 4,000 apartments within the community which has residential towers, a commercial tower, villas/townhouses and a retail mall. With such a huge complex, there are over 50,000 FM assets/systems to be maintained including ventilation, AC, power and lighting, swimming pools, external façade cleaning, gym equipment, fire and life safety systems, elevators, CCTV, access control, car park barriers etc. This is a 24/7/365 operation for Inspire, so staff availability is a high priority and rotating shifts for technical staff, housekeepers, security guards, life guards, landscaping staff are closely monitored and controlled to ensure peak activity times throughout the week have the appropriate staffing levels.

Sir Bani Yas Island: This project has been with Inspire for more than 10 years and is extremely diverse in scope. We deliver traditional FM services to all manner of buildings around the island, but we also manage and maintain the utilities infrastructure, IT infrastructure, the wildlife enclosures and perimeter fencing, security gates, vehicle maintenance for all cars, buses, trucks, water tankers, tourist jeeps and even a mobile crane used for transporting temporary accommodation around the island. During tourist season, we also provide FM services supporting the organised activities within the beach areas used by guests from visiting cruise liners docking on the new terminal. We further manage accommodation and catering provision for our client’s staff, our own staff, hotel staff, forestry commission staff, catering staff and visiting contractors.   

Louvre Abu Dhabi: In 2021, Inspire were awarded the soft service contract for Louvre Abu Dhabi (LAD). This prestigious museum venue is a world class environment and it contains extremely valuable artefacts throughout all of the visitor galleries. From a housekeeping perspective, the challenges involve an extremely complex roof arrangement called ‘The Dome’ which is visually striking but very labour intensive to clean, however, this is managed on a continuous basis by our in-house façade cleaning team (800TEK). This dedicated on-site team also ensures all external buildings, which are white in colour, are presented to the best possible standards. Whilst we do not clean the artefacts themselves, we work very closely with the LAD teams to ensure the highest standards of cleaning within the visitor galleries using zero chemicals throughout. 

Q. Are leaders different from managers? What makes a manager a leader?

Yes, leaders are very different to managers. My initial management training in the UK worked on the principle that a leader is someone you would choose to follow whereas a manager is just a hierarchal person above you in a company. For a manager to be a leader they have to do this by example and demonstrate to their team they possess the necessary skills and experience to be given the role in the first place and then to engage with their team to deliver whatever the tasks dictate providing hands-on support where and when required. Mentoring staff to progress themselves is another quality found in a leader.

Q. For aspiring FM managers, what are the leadership qualities you recommend they imbibe and practice?

Following the principle identified above, that their team will choose to follow them, it is important for all ‘up and coming’ FM managers to ensure they have a clear vision of what they would like to see as a ‘delivery model’ for their FM project and also to ensure the team is made of staff proportionate to the scope of work to be delivered, i.e. if 30% of the maintenance and reactive activities are likely to be electrical then 30% of the team needs to be electrically biased. If the team proportion is incorrect the workload may be unbalanced potentially causing discontent downstream of the manager.  

A good working knowledge of CAFM systems is worth mastering early on in their career as a well configured CAFM system containing all maintainable assets is a must to ensure scope/KPI compliance and adding random auditing of the activities will ensure they have been delivered correctly. It is worth noting that you don’t necessarily need engineering or technical skills to master CAFM. 

Finally, on all FM projects it is important to have a very good client relationship from the outset. This will be very beneficial throughout the course of the contract, as there will be occasions where either a critical asset fails or (in the GCC) there may be water penetration during heavy rain that has a negative impact on the client’s building. So, a good relationship both professional and personal, can be very helpful in managing these situations efficiently and effectively. 

Q. What are the sustainability goals that you have set for Inspire Integrated?

Inspire operates under Eltizam’s ESG (Environmental, Social & Governance) framework which is driven by our shareholders, IHC (International Holding Company) & ADNEC (Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre). This takes a step up from sustainability goals traditionally aimed at FM delivery on Client premises, such as our technical teams introducing energy saving initiatives, our housekeeping teams using eco-friendly cleaning consumables and our landscaping teams carefully managing potable water consumption. We now monitor our business as a whole and are now reviewing additional activities such as customer happiness, positive community impact and ethical business management.