“Traditionally, facility management is seen as an area in constant optimization. Energy costs go up, building taxes go up, costs increase across every other segment, and most of the time, the only element that seems easy to reduce is facility management. Why? It’s intuitive. Most often, facility management is seen as a recurring cost rather than as added value for the service or product created in a building, whether we’re talking about retail or other types of spaces.

At its core, facility management means technical maintenance, utilities management, cleaning, security, fire safety — generally, day-to-day recurring costs. Facility management is what can make the difference in optimizing structural costs within a business,” said Gabriel Tomescu, CEO of BMF Group, during the Future Retail & FMCG Forum organized by The Diplomat-Bucharest.

Key statements:

• Facility management is what can protect margins. It is what can generate efficiency from every point of view, starting with operational efficiency and even improving processes that ultimately reach the end of the customer’s shopping experience.
• The market is extremely volatile, cost pressure is extraordinary, and most of our partners have come to understand facility management as a business strategy — not as a cost center, but as a value-generating center, a pillar that delivers the highest operational efficiency. Through everything we do, we can generate significant efficiency in utilities consumption. Now, electricity costs in the retail market are the most unpredictable and volatile component of the cost chain in sales and production. Here we have important solutions for process optimization, delivering 20–30% efficiency gains.
• Then, everything we do moves toward decarbonization and improving the quality of the environment in which people work, increasing the value of the properties we manage, generating not only decarbonization benefits but also a competitive advantage. Ultimately, today in the retail market the most important element is the customer — but how do you stay competitive in front of the customer? Everything comes down to this competitive paradigm.
• In the buildings we manage, we generate many process optimization solutions, starting with very simple things: optimizing cleaning processes, then security, maintenance, and utilities efficiency.
• BMF Group’s business started after the 2008 crisis. Essentially, we know what difficult times look like, and efficiency is embedded in our DNA. In the projects we manage — over 15 million square meters covered by integrated services — the key word at BMF every day is efficiency.
• It is very important for people to understand that new technological solutions position them at a higher level and make them more efficient. Most often, people fear that technological solutions and AI will take their jobs or control them. Our people have understood that these technologies help them and provide stability for their jobs and, obviously, for the business we are developing.
• My colleagues at BMF must understand this paradigm shift and the need to implement maintenance processes and protocols, as well as other services, together with beneficiaries.
• Cost pressure and overall business volatility help us implement technological solutions, because people want more than ever to have data and to make decisions based on real data.