With the Shanghai World Expo in full swing and Beijing’s ambition to become a “world city” gaining more international media coverage, we can sense renewed interest, bordering on frenzy, in FM circles. I have, in the past few weeks, taken part in several debates on the emerging Chinese Facility Management market, discussions usually involving starry-eyed foreigners hoping to sell their products and services to the “huge” Chinese market…

The trend started several years ago, but nowadays everybody is talking about “Lean”. Not denying the benefits of this approach, which from my maintenance point-of-view is nothing but a generalization of the TPM principles, I am by nature very wary of today’s over-hyped concepts…

With its “Better City – Better life” theme, the Expo 2010 is a paradoxical symbol of sustainability, knowing that most of the pavilions will be dismantled after 6 months… Maintenance has clearly not been the top priority, as first-time China investors struggled with construction issues.

Welcome to the second issue of our Maintenance in China newsletter! I am pleased to say that the first edition, sent last month to around 70 subscribers (most of them Siveco customers) and read by another 210 (according to web statistics), received good feedback. Let’s continue and hopefully improve, with more contributions from partners and customers!

Welcome to the first issue our Siveco China monthly newsletter! It will be obvious to everyone receiving this that we at Siveco China like challenges: “Maintenance in China” is indeed an ambitious theme; our target audience is extremely diverse spanning industries, job positions, and nationalities (we counted 13 different nationalities among our customers!); the email newsletter format also requires us to keep articles short and to-the-point.