A few weeks ago my FM group had an interview with Mr Colin Devenish, as previously discussed he is the head of operations at the V&A Waterfront and therefore one of our interviewee's on our Silo District report.
We met up with Colin at the Waterfront head office in the Waterfront to ask him a few questions around the operations. facilities management and GBFI's that would be implemented in their under construction Silo District.
He made it very clear from the start, that even though the Silo District is in a precinct of it's own, it operation will still be controlled by the V&A operations team. Just like other areas of the Waterfront, the buildings themselves will still be owned by the V&A and simply rented to the tenants. He spoke to us about how the V&A receive power (electricity) from the council and distribute it themselves to the various buildings.
He continued to explain to us how the strategic goals of the district are directly aligned with those of the V&A and are simply to be the best. The Silo district is heavily focused on maintaing a 4-6 star GBCSA Green Rating and how the buildings will work in conjunction with each other to optimise consumption maximisation and efficiency.
It was interesting to find out that one of his major concerns is the threat of terrorism and how due to the V&A's large scale and due to local government inefficiency, the V&A often take responsibility amongst themselves to handle their own waste disposal and civil infrastructure development such as roads and street lighting.
Further discussions revealed how each member of his team take responsibility for various aspects of the project and how each team member's involvement overlaps with the overall strategic goals of the precinct.
Overall the interview was a successful and we learned a lot as a group about the facilities management responsibilities both from a strategic and operational perspective!
