The outsourced facilities management (FM) sector in the GCC region is poised to touch $10 billion by 2012, according to a study conducted by Arab Business Review.

The region’s booming construction market has spawned the need for top-end benchmarks to ensure the sustainability of these buildings, thus incurring the development of maintenance programs which has in turn created a huge demand for professionals in the FM industry.

In line with this, Macdonald & Company has announced its participation at Cityscape Dubai 2008, during which the leading recruitment consultancy focusing solely on the property industry, aims to address the growing demand for FM professionals, as many projects in the region reach their delivery stage.

According to Macdonald & Company, the region has experienced a steady expansion within the FM consultancy sector and due to the rapid completion of buildings service providers have been awarded multimillion dirham contracts for service provision.

Therefore, there is a high demand for senior level practitioners, who will be able to strategically manage the FM services within some of Dubai’s iconic towers and developments, the company said.

The company aims to provide transparent statistics and insights on the latest market trends in the GCC construction and property market, through the ‘Middle East Real Estate Salary Survey’ for 2008. This will be launched at Cityscape Dubai 2008.

The Salary Survey is being conducted in cooperation with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and CMIS, Cityscape’s new online market intelligence service, which ensures thorough and accurate results and industry-wide participation in the survey.

“FM practitioners in the region are beginning to take a more significant role, as developers become more aware of the relevance of employing highly competent FM professionals in the early stages of their processes,” said Danielle Le Faucheur, associate, Macdonald & Company.

'Amidst the resounding calls for sustainability in the real estate sector, FM professionals are needed to ensure the efficiency and longer lifecycle of the project, from the design and conception stage to its completion,' he noted.

'As the leading recruitment consultancy for the real estate sector, we maintain an extensive database of highly trained FM professionals who can deliver outstanding services for the most demanding projects and buildings,' he added.

Macdonald & Company has well-networked FM teams internationally, who operate within the company’s global offices in South Africa, Hong Kong, Australia and the UK.

This allows the company to offer a large variety of international candidates to clients. The company’s FM client portfolio includes Emaar, Emcor, John Buck International, MAB Property Service and Development, Alshaya, Emrill, Spectrum, Idama, Sama Dubai, Multiplex, MAF, Limitless and Al Tayer.

'We have seen an increased demand in the requirement of facilities managers in the Middle East, especially in the UAE. The UAE’s FM market accounts for nearly 66 per cent of total facilities management market revenue share and reflects the strongest growth rate in the region,' observed Christopher Stokes, senior consultant, Macdonald & Company.

'Therefore, our initial focus has been on the UAE market providing our clients with extremely experienced FM.'

'We are also researching the FM markets outside of the UAE via our strong FM contacts thus allowing us to collate facts and trends for the benefit of real estate players and FM professionals alike in line with our vision when we launched the salary survey initiative,” he added.-TradeArabia News Service