The paper handles the topic of Facility Management using Frasers Centerpoints ltd’s property, Causeway Point Mall in Singapore as a case study. The paper provides background information regarding the case study before showing how the company has been able to improve and sustain these value prepositions before finally recommending a well thought out contingency plan for the mall.
Frasers Centerpoint Ltd (FCL) is an international real estate company based in Singapore. The company develops and manages properties through its three main strategic business units of business namely Singapore, Australia and hospitality industry. In Singapore the unit entails both residential and commercial businesses that serve the “home-buyers” market and those that those that look for spaces for business. The Australian unit deals with real estate and non-real estate business as well as having interest in logistics and industrial ventures in Australia and New Zealand. (Chotipanich & Issarasak, 2017) The Hospitality strategic unit on the other hand deals with ownership and operation of hotels in a number of countries mostly in Asia including United Kingdom, Thailand and China. Being a listed company in Singapore Exchange Securities, Frasers Centerpoint has acquired immense goodwill from the business communities and investors across the world. To put this into perspective the company’s total assets base stood at $ 24,204M as at the year 2016.
One of the major projects that the company has successfully carries out is the Causeway Point mall opened in 1998 and has 7 floors with total space area of 420,000 square feet. The mall is based in Woodlands area in Singapore and is the seventh largest suburban in Singapore. The facility is home to significant number of business such as restaurants with unique cuisines, shops and food outlets that give a shopper a one-stop shopping experience in Woodlands Singapore.
Causeway Point Mall is located in a strategic position in Woodland Regional area near to Woodlands Mass Rapid Transport zone and bus interchange. (Makgopa, 2016) This strategic position therefore ensures that the mall and the business inside it are exposed to maximum traffic as possible which is likely to translate into business for the mall and its occupants. To be specific, Annual Shopper visits to the mall was estimated at 23.4M people between October 2012 and September the following year. This denotes quite a huge number of traffic that underpins the strategic position Causeway mall occupies. The mall has also won environmental awards having been fitted with eco-friendly features that have reduced energy consumption. (Seagraves & Gallimore, 2013)
Causeway Point Mall is designed such that natural light from the Sun can be utilized for lighting up the mall. The Sun’s light energy is a green energy because it is renewable. This feature allows Causeway mall to use less energy as it would have used if the designed wouldn’t have allowed natural Sun light into the mall. This feature also makes those shoppers who have strong connection or enthusiasm in environmental matters to have a special connection with the mall which in turn boost business in the mall. Being Eco-friendly also endears the mall to the population because its owners mind about the common good of the clean environment which benefits everyone. (Seagraves & Gallimore, 2013) The common-good theory in philosophy asserts that entities or people who have interest in common-good receive goodwill from the population which in this case refers to the bigger share of the shoppers /market.
Frasers Centerpoint Ltd ensured that the Causeway mall space is optimally utilized to realize maximum return on investments to the company and its share holders. The rooftop of the mall has Children playing area where they can freely play around without causing any interruption to shoppers doing their shopping inside the mall.
This feature allows the mall to have a wider market in terms of visitors who can visit the mall. From parents who want to have quality time with their children to shoppers who only want to do their shopping with wide variety of items to choose from all are accommodated in the Causeway mall. This provides an advantage in that the mall appeals to almost all market segments in an urban set up.
Causeway mall has unique user-friendly designs that make the shoppers enjoy their shopping or their time at the mall conveniently. The escalators that can accommodate people with disabilities have been fitted thus making it one of the easiest malls to access in Singapore by people with disabilities. The young and the old have also easy time moving from one section of the mall to another. As a result of these feature the Causeway Point mall won Building and Construction Authority awards for having universal design that can accommodate all shoppers regardless of their age or body challenges that they may have. This award re-affirms the best shopping experience that one is likely to receive or experience will shopping at this particular mall. It also underpins Frasers Centerpoint’s desire to have a more inclusive society that makes everyone comfortable. The mall also has family rooms at all its seven floors. This advantage ensures that those shoppers with families need not to worry about having private places to tend to their young ones. (Frasercenterpoint, 2017) The family room shows extend to which the design of the mall has gone in terms of ensuring the facility is as user-friendly as possible. To mitigate on the effect of heavy human traffic in and out of the mall, the company has built six external routes that can be used by shoppers to access or leave the mall. Overall, these attributes puts Causeway Point mall at the better position compared to the competition in terms of its strategic location, user-friendly and eco-friendly designs among other attributes that makes this mall a place to be for any shopper who wants to quality experience while shopping. (Tang, 2003)
Causeway Point has multiple numbers of anchor tenants doing business in the mall. Traditionally, most of the malls of Causeway Point stature have one major anchor tenant who usually takes the most prime part of the building for business. The anchor tenants at Causeway Point include, Bagus, Metro, Kiddy Place and Uniqlo among other major international brands. This strategy ensures continuity of business in the mall even if one or two anchor tenants decide to leave the Causeway Point mall. Having one anchor tenant does not guarantee business continuity because should anything happen to the only anchor tenant in the mall then the facility will suffer huge financial losses that will eventually affect the other smaller business depending on the anchor tenant to pull crowd into the facility. The management of Causeway Point strategically planed for continued business in the mall by distributing the risk associated with sole anchor tenant to several others who easily be replaced without affecting the business in the mall.
Causeway Point mall has invested in high level of customer service that ensures customers get to enjoy unforgettable experience while with the mall’s premise. To put this point into perspective, we take a case of a customer who accidently dropped her phone into a drain while alighting from a cab at the taxi bay within the mall’s premise. The distraught customer approached the security officers at the mall who were actually changing shifts and were about to leave work. On inspecting the manhole where the phone could be seen inside but could not be retrieved as the manhole was firmly sealed and had small openings that could not allow the phone to be retrieved. (Kolbe & Greer, 2006)
The security team called in the Mall’s mechanical team to see if they can unseal the manhole then have the phone retrieved, this was however not possible but to get to the phone the Mechanical team had to use another opening 50 meters from where the phone was so that they can be able to retrieve it. (Frasercenterpoint, 2017)This was promptly done not withstanding the danger that may have been lurking in the tunnel considering the place was not first cleared before allowing someone to enter inside. In the end the phone was safely retrieved and handed over to the lady. In her “Thank you” email she said the phone had her honeymoon photos and she would have lost this completely had the phone not retrieved. This was exceptional customer service at the mall and goes a long way in showing the mall’s management determination to continually maintain high level of unforgettable customer experience which improves customer loyalty and in turn sustains business for the mall. (Levitt, 2013)
Causeway mall was upgraded to the tune of $72M in th year 2010. This upgrade unlocked the potential the mall has the upgrade reduced sizes of big-box tenants from 65% of the total available business area to 50%. What this meant is that the mall will host more tenants who need special sizes and pay more per square feet than the big-box tenants. This eventually leads to more profits for the investors. The upgrade re-organized the whole building to create more space for business which provided an avenue for increasing the value of the facility without necessarily increasing its space. Through this action the management company, Fraser Centerpoint ltd ensured that mall gets even bigger business opportunity that comes with better stability. (Stipanuk & Roffmann, 2012)
Causeway Point mall Facilities service management is of high standard in terms of how the facility is continually improved and ensuring that all the amenities in the facility are functional in line with the company’s mission of creating value through space for today and tomorrow. Evaluating the customer satisfaction, the analysis reveals strong commitment to the company’s core value of responsiveness and reliability. This is evidenced by the case of the lady who accidently dropped her phone into the drain at the mall’s cab bay and was promptly assisted. The company has also managed the space in the mall optimally for the benefit of her stakeholders in line with the company’s vision of being their stakeholder’s real estate company of choice as evidenced by upgrade it undertook on Causeway mall. The company’s record management is also top notch in terms of recording all the activities taking place at the mall. All the records have digital backups that ensure the crucial data is not lost in case of any eventuality. The company has also invested in top notch environmental management technologies such as designing the mall to utilize natural light from the sun which points to the company’s fidelity to its own value of being innovative and as a result of this the mall won prestigious award in environment conservation. Evaluating the company’s financial management, the outcome reveals a proper planning and utilization of the facility’s finances has shown by re-investment of about $72M back into the mall in order to improve its value and future financial performance in line with the company’s value of being committed in achieving and exceeding the company goals.
To sustain business, Frasers Centerpoint ltd should carry out continuous research using the data collected within the mall such as data on customer satisfaction surveys and consumer behavior as contingency measure to ensure that the management get’s early information regarding any issue that may result to the mall losing its status as a place to be for any shopper in Singapore. This way the company will be proactive there will be little chance that an issue may crop up unawares which may affect business for the company. (Atkin & Brooks, 2009)
References
Atkin, B., & Brooks, A. (2009). Total facilities management. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell.
Chotipanich, S., & Issarasak, S. (2017). A study of facility management operation strategy in shopping malls. Property Management, 35(3), 236-253. https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/pm-07-2015-0029
Frasercenterpoint. (2017). Stores.. Fraserscentrepointmalls.com. Retrieved 5 December 2017, from https://www.fraserscentrepointmalls.com/store.php?CategoryID=594
Kolbe, P., & Greer, G. (2006). Investment analysis for real estate decisions. Chicago, Ill: Dearborn Real Estate Education.
Levitt, J. (2013). Facilities management. [New York, N.Y.] (222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017): Momentum Press.
Makgopa, S. (2016). Determining shopping mall visitors’ perceptions on mall attributes. Problems And Perspectives In Management, 14(3-2), 522-527. https://dx.doi.org/10.21511/ppm.14(3-2).2016.08
Seagraves, P., & Gallimore, P. (2013). The Gender Gap in Real Estate Sales: Negotiation Skill or Agent Selection?. Real Estate Economics, 41(3), 600-631. https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/reec.12006
Stipanuk, D., & Roffmann, H. (2012). Facilities management. East Lansing, Mich.: Educational Institute, American Hotel & Motel Association.
Tang, S. (2003). Modern construction project management. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Warren, C. (2012). Global property markets and Property Management. Property Management, 30(5). https://dx.doi.org/10.1108/pm.2012.11330eaa.001
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