Interesting times (again) in the Chinese FM market

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… Last time I checked, however (see previous newsletter article), most FM-related suppliers were still struggling to grow their business profitably.

In some respects, I believe we have entered a vicious circle — a phenomenon that will durably affect the local FM market: suppliers take orders with very low or imaginary profit margins and subsequently face problems to deliver, which in turn causes customers to doubt the value of their services. More often than not, we see suppliers, foreigners and locals alike, trying to replicate a Western model at a lower cost: my experience is this does not work in China. Instead, we need to create homegrown models, to invent new solutions: this is the true opportunity of China.

In this context, I found the recent declarations by US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood during his Shanghai visit in May particularly heartening: Secretary LaHood called for Chinese railway companies to bring their high-speed rail expertise and technologies to the US! By 2012, China is expected to have more high-speed rail track than the rest of the world combined: having successfully overcome the fantastic challenge of building such a huge, technologically-advanced, infrastructure, China must now invent ways to maintain it. Considering China’s present shortcomings in the area of maintenance and the sheer scale of the facilities involved, it is unlikely that either existing local practices or Western recipes can apply… We must create something fundamentally new.

In the meantime, our ambitious little newsletter, which attempts every month to explore what I have come to call “Maintenance with Chinese characteristics”, has grown rather well, thanks in no small part to our talented marketing manager Fiona Yan (featured in this issue). On top of a subscribers’ base of around 400, over 3,500 people have also received a printed copy of the June “Lean manufacturing” issue! Feedback has mostly been positive, with a demand for more practical topics.

Welcome to the summer edition of “Maintenance in China”! As some of our customers’ activities slow down during the summer, we have decided to release only one issue for July and August, which will also be distributed in magazine format at the “Workplace & FM Asia Summit” held in Shanghai on September 9-10. You will find that this edition has strong FM overtones, though I believe most is applicable to other industries as well. The Reliability section focuses on the improvement potential in FM, from the owner’s perspective, followed by a Customer story (Chang Cheng Property Group, a leading residential property management company headquartered in Shenzhen). The Partners section features PCVue, a highly innovative supplier of SCADA and HMI, on the topic of energy efficiency. Tips & Tricks covers contract management, an often underutilized module of our CMMS Coswin. Finally, the Latest News presents an overview of this month’s activity at Siveco China.

Although it may look like we have become a publishing company, Siveco is still active in maintenance projects… We are especially proud to be conducting audits at the Shanghai World Expo (the excellent Spanish pavilion makes for a very interesting study, with a focus on the post-Expo life of the facility). As I write these words, we have Siveco engineers working on maintenance improvement projects in nine different cities (Beijing, Changshu, Datong, Hohhot, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan and Xuzhou).

The Shanghai summer is as hot as ever: especially for plant managers fuming (pun intended) against typically ineffective air conditioning, my advice is to ask your maintenance staff or FM contractors to clean coils and filters and if problems persist, to check for leaky air ducts. Don’t trust paper records: instead, get the job done. Talking about heat, have you experienced the innovative water-sprinkling cooling systems in place at the Expo? This is the paradox of China: advanced, creative solutions cohabit with a lack of basic preventive care. Our Siveco business is making use of one to improve the other – and it works!

Bruno Lhopiteau

General Manager

Siveco China

Tags： FM、Expo 2010