Fast-track construction, frequent upgrades, latest technology, wireless, going paperless, etc, are the everyday terms of today. 

As competition rises, the race towards optimization or cost reduction is also in play. Some construction gurus state that forming a partnership with your subcontractors is essential to having a successful project, so how far is this true? In the modern world of extreme competition, how far can a partnership or long-term relationship with your contractors or subcontractors last?

All these questions arise when we go deeper into researching the essence of success stories, be it from simple to complex projects. The people in construction may say that some of the projects they worked on are the most complex of all as many aspects needed to come together and this is where the trusted partner comes to the rescue. The project management mantra is balancing time, cost, and quality. How can this be achieved by forming a long-term partnership with supporting vendors?

My thoughts on this take me in another direction: How long do you take to understand a person who you just interviewed for an hour or a new friend you had dinner with? You can ponder over this question and derive your answers, but the intention here is to ask how long it takes to understand a company or your contractor? It may range from days to months to years. 

If so, your newly constructed state-of-the-art building is being given to the most economical facilities management vendor for just 12 months. Post that, the intention is to re-evaluate the vendors in the market and hire the most competitive party. These strategies may have been proven fruitful to some and bitter to the rest. These again can be debated based on company policies or professional choices. There may be no right or wrong here, but the only qualifying criteria would be to evaluate based on the time spent in managing this vendor, quality achieved through operations for the long run, and the cost incurred over a three-to-five-year period. 

The volatility of today’s market is alarming, but the best thing we can do is to plan and be ready for the abrupt changes. Accepting the changes and making room for more is the only way forward. Most literature and strategy experts confirm that forming and maintaining long-term partnerships with vendors help in streamlining the business and the associated operations. Giving the vendor a promise of being the contract for three, five, ten, or more years helps them to plan more in-depth, increase the CAPEX spending, and focus more on this particular customer and project. 

Long-term contracting gives the facilities management companies the ability to invest more time and more cost spreading the ROI over a longer period. This allows the clients to see that certain CAPEX costs are spread over a period, and the value they receive may not be visible immediately. Rather, a detailed audit a few years down the line may demonstrate the value addition done by the vendor. Now, this doesn’t happen by magic. There has to be meticulous planning done by both the client and the FM vendor in establishing clear objectives which can be measured along the way. 

Conceptualising the services required, joint planning done by the client and FM vendor, partnering for execution, recording the required data along the way, and then analysing this to make future course corrections. For ensuring the above aspects are achieved, it is critical to invest time using a clear road map and this only happens when the client and the contractor have established a well-measured partnership.

The author, Fahad Mohamed, is Director for Dubai and Northern Emirates regions at Adeeb.