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10.02.2012
Facility and Property Management in Bulgaria
The trends of 2011 and the expectations for 2012 - as seen by the experts in the sector
AUTHOR: publics.bg

This is the second edition of the specialized annual catalog of publics.bg for facility and property management services in Bulgaria. Worldwide, buildings are the largest polluter of environment. As we combine this fact with the trend of moving trade and administrative spaces toward specialized business parks and gated communities, the responsibility for the safety and the comfort of the occupants becomes more and more important. So management and maintenance of buildings and integrated systems becomes crucial for every developed society.

Public Services OOD has prepared for you the unique edition, containing systematic information about facility and property management companies and contractors in Bulgaria. As in last year’s catalog, this one also starts with the results from our traditional national survey of the FM and PM market services, which is prepared by publics.bg with the expert support of Facility Management Consulting OOD. You can find some interesting trends and potential for development in the sector during 2012.

This year we have added a new page for the profiles of the FM companies – a matrix, which shows in tabular view all the services that companies offer to their customers. Our aim is to maximize the information value of this catalogue.

Also, our goal is to make this catalogue a traditional annual overview of the growing facility management sector in Bulgaria.


Systematic information is needed for the development of the whole sector. So we hope you will support our endeavor!

We hope that you will enjoy reading this publication!
 
Petar Tashev, managing partner Public Services OOD
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The Facility Management market in Bulgaria will further grow. Along with its growth, the number of companies which consider in a responsible way this new business segment in Bulgaria will also grow. The catalogue that you see shows two main trends. The first one, and maybe the one that is more important, is that the consolidation in this market is still absent. The second trend is that we can already see the “class differences” between the few “large” FM services companies and the large number of small ones. However, the large companies still have not reached volumes that would hinder the small ones to compete for new projects.

Besides small companies, TOP 5 ones have other competitors. These are their potential clients, who are still not motivated enough to outsource. On one hand, this hides a huge potential. On the other hand, this is a “threat” for new competitors and is additionally fragmenting an already quite segmented market.

Our prognosis is that in the coming year or two there will be even more small companies. They would be former construction companies or brokerage companies.

The chance for growth for TOP 5 companies would be to transform from an FM services provider in a Facility Manager.

The proper tactics is to provide services with own personnel and to train managers who have a complete outlook on the whole facility management process. The professional orientation will be the key to growth in the next year.

Anton Guintchev, Partner and FM Consultant in Facility Management Consulting OOD
_____________________

Facility Management in Bulgaria is developing every year. More companies – Bulgarian investors in real estate and large companies, take the needed steps towards introducing professional management in their buildings in order to optimize the costs and to increase the quality of the services they offer, as well as improvement of the working environment for their employees. This is for sure a positive trend, which we expect to continue in the following years.

The facility management sector has seen changes also at the European scene. The European Committee for Standardization has moved the FM sector from the construction sector into the business services. In autumn 2011, CEN has published four new FM standards under EN15221: 3 - Quality, 4 - Taxonomy, 5 - Processes, and 6 – Space.

These two events from last year had a huge impact on the FM development not only in Europe, but also in Bulgaria. Bulgarian FM services consumers became more demanding and already know the best practices in Europe, which leads to higher requirements for FM contractors.

A truly interesting fact from the development of FM market in the EU is the cancelled deal of Group 4 Securitas, which wanted to acquire the Danish FM company ISS and become the largest FM company in the world. It would have operations in 130 countries with more than 19 billion euro turnover. Such M&A actions from FM companies could become more common in the recent years. Thus they will try to expand their portfolio of services.

FM in Bulgaria

The survey this year is aiming to show what type of companies take part in the facility and property management services market in Bulgaria, how much and what type of space they manage, how large are the companies and so on. The survey this year is meant only for professional FM companies – FM providers, in opposite to the last year’s survey, in which also large companies with FM departments took part. We think that this will show a better picture of FM development in Bulgaria. Internal facility managers are subject to another survey.

As a professional media for public services knowledge in Bulgaria, publics.bg considers its mission delivering useful and qualitative information. This can be achieved only with active support from all experts, who share their vision and expectations for the sector. The survey this year is prepared with the support of the consultancy company Facility Management Consulting (www.fmc.bg), which is specialized in delivering highly professional services in the field of FM and is the organizer of the traditional annual FM conference in Buglaria.

Questions

The survey, sent to more than 150 companies, contains 15 questions, which had to define the main services offered, how many of them are offered with own resources or are outsourced. Also the survey aimed to show whether Bulgarian companies used contemporary systems for building monitoring, and whether they used different software products for facility management.

The participants

In the survey 51 leading companies from the property and facility management sectors took part. More than half of the companies manage on average between 2 and 10 buildings, and more than 63% manage more than 50 000 sq. meters of space.

Most of the participants manage predominantly administrative buildings – almost 35%, and residential buildings are managed by a little more than 1/4 of the participants.

Administrative space leads this year due to a couple of factors – on one had, FM companies are more active in the survey. On the other hand, as we mentioned above, more and more investors and companies understand the need of professional care for their real estate and start to use professional FM companies.

The most offered services

The largest number of the participants offered in 2011 almost all FM services – technical FM, security, cleaning, etc. The least favorable services were copier services, postal services, and catering.

It is obvious and normal, that technical FM services, cleaning, small repairs, and security are the most offered ones. They are core services, offered by every FM company.

Most of the companies use their own human resources for technical maintenance, cleaning, and small repairs. All mentioned here are technical and infrastructure FM services. Concerning outsourcing, the most popular services are security, fire safety, postal services and catering.

Outsourcing of security and fire safety is easy to understand – these are specific activities, which are controlled by different legal regulations. Catering, the most outsourced service, is also a specific business.

Problematic cases

According to participants, their problematic cases are often related to account receivables, legal requirements, and relationship with FM services consumers. Less than half of the participants noted, that they still have problems with investors and owners of buildings. According to the survey results, FM companies have only a few problematic cases with their own personnel and with the contracting partners.

Computer Aided Facility Management (CAFM)

According to the survey, the level of usage of CAFM is still not very high in Bulgaria - only about a quarter of the participants use such tools. Nevertheless, 88% of the companies think that using software tools for facility management would increase service quality, and 76% answered that it would lead to better task timing.

As in the last year’s survey, it is also clear now, that using CAFM would help companies in seeking better solutions for planning day-to-day activities and for better relations with their contractors.

Development of FM in Bulgaria will surely increase the usage of CAFM. This is one of the FM sectors, which will develop rapidly in the following years. The companies started to understand the need of professional software, which is better for their needs in order to manage heterogenic real estate fund.

FM personnel and qualification

The negative trend from last year’s survey is valid today as well - companies have trouble in finding appropriate specialists for FM activities. Almost 3/4 of the participants said, that this is a difficult task for them.

Nevertheless, no company representative has noted the FM master program in the Faculty of Economics and Business administration in Sofia University (www.bit.ly/su-fm) as an appropriate means for increasing the qualification of the personnel. This fact could be explained with the negative feeling for the whole educational system in Bulgaria.

The positive fact is that companies find their own ways to increase the personnel’s qualification – internal trainings – 94%, taking part in FM seminars and trainings – 47% and participation in national and international conferences – 41%.

Goals for 2012

The Top 5 priorities for the participants in the survey are: increasing the quality of their services, decreasing the operating costs, building/managing new objects and decreasing the time for managing single activities.

As last year, number one priority for this year is increasing the quality of services. This one again proves that investors, construction companies, and owners of buildings know very well the need of high quality service.

Customer Relationship Management

About 65% of the participants use their own website for alternative connection with customers, and less than 50% use social media. This is a relatively low percentage, considering how many people and companies use actively social media.

Conclusion

Although the survey does not pretend to give a full picture of the property and facility management services market, the authors express their belief that the results can help many companies to see their position in comparison to their competitors. Everyone can compare the degree of outsourcing, as well as the strengths of using CAFM systems.

Additional information about the companies in the sector could be found on the matrix pages of our catalog.

The team of publics.bg hopes that the survey has managed to lay the foundations of a full scope look on the property and facility services market in Bulgaria and that with the collaboration of market participants, this survey will become an annual tradition. We hope that in the years to come there will be more and more companies involved in the survey. This will be a statement of trust toward our survey as an instrument for sharing information, as well as a proof for the increasing domestic market.
_____________________

We expect your comments or suggestions for the next editions of the survey. You can use our email office@publics.bg or phone: +359 887 499 443

The survey is prepared by Petar Tashev and Atanas Georgiev from Public Services OOD (publics.bg) and by dipl. eng. Anton Guintchev – FM consultant from Facility Management Consulting OOD (www.fmc.bg)

You can browse the Facility and Property Management in Bulgaria catalog 2012 online (in Bulgarian language)

You can also download the catalog in PDF (31.4 MB)




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