How Bouygues manages an Empire-Sized Footprint

Bouygues is into telecoms / media, and building and road construction. It also knows it has to watch its energy footprint closely. Owning 47% of energy giant Alstom keeps it constantly in the media spotlight. Shall we find out more about its facility management policies?

The journal Premises and Facilities Management interviewed MD Martin Bouygues on his personal opinions concerning managing energy consumption in facilities. He began by commenting that this was hardly a subject for the C-Suite in years gone by. Low-level clerks simply paid the bills following which the actual amounts were lost in the general expenses account. That of course has changed.

Early pressure came from soaring energy bills, which were pursued by a whole host of electricity-saving gadgets. However, it was only after the carbon crisis caught business by surprise that the link was forged to aerial pollution, and the social responsibilities of big business to help with the solution. The duty to have an energy strategy became an obligation eagerly policed by organisations such as Greenpeace.

Unsurprisingly, Martin Bouygues? advice begins with keeping energy consumption and its carbon footprint as high up on the agenda as health and safety. ?It needs bravery and a lot of hard work to get it there,? he says, ?so perseverance is the key?. 

The company has developed proprietary software that enables it to pull data from remote sensors in more than 80 countries every fifteen minutes. A single large building can contribute 50 million data items annually making data big business in the system. Every building has an allocated energy performance contract against which results are reported monthly, as a basis for reviewing progress.

The system is intelligent and able to incorporate low-occupancy periods such as weekends and public holidays. What is measured gets managed. We all know that, but how many of us apply the principle to our energy bills. With assistance from ecoVaro, the possible becomes real.

We offer a similar service to the Bouygues model with one notable exception. You don’t buy the software and you only pay when you use it. Our systems are simply designed for busy financial managers.

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Disadvantages of Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are flexible, inexpensive and easy to use. They are especially handy when it comes to beating report submission deadlines or making impromptu data computations. That’s why office workers, managers and even executives have made spreadsheets their go-to solution for such undertakings and more.

Spreadsheets have become so ubiquitous, that they’ve found their way into a wide range of applications including complex modelling, accounting reconciliations, market data analysis, work flow tracking and monitoring, analytical review and financial reporting.

Unfortunately, organisations heavy reliance on spreadsheets have made these User Developed Applications (UDA) into high-risk office tools. Simple spreadsheet errors like leaving out a negative sign or a cut-and-paste mistake have already caused million-dollar discrepancies. Also, when a fraudulent employee enters into the picture, the risks become unimaginable.

Think TransAlta?s spreadsheet cut-and-paste glitch (the company later called this a ?simple clerical error?) which caused the energy firm a whopping $24 million loss or Fidelity?s overstatement of its earnings owing to the omission of the minus sign on the spreadsheet of a $1.3 billion net capital loss.

In both cases and in many other similar spreadsheet fiasco, the errors played a major role in the organisation’s decision-making, leading to disastrous results including, but not limited to financial loss, shattered investor confidence and public embarrassment.

If these are scenarios your organisation can ill afford, then it’s time to ask yourself: Do the disadvantages of spreadsheets far outweigh their benefits to merit a call for total liberation from them?

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Disadvantages of Spreadsheets


Spreadsheet woes – ill equipped for an Agile Business Environment


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Spreadsheet Woes – Limited features for easy adoption of a control framework


Spreadsheet woes – Burden in SOX Compliance and other Regulations


Spreadsheet Risk Issues


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Why Spreadsheets can send the pillars of Solvency II crashing down

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Successful Engineer Communication With FieldElite

Technological innovations have been on the rise in the recent past. Our news media are awash with new technologies that are being released in almost every industry. From smart buildings to sophisticated gadgets, every industry has a technological invention to flaunt. 

One area in which technology has blossomed is the field service. In the field service management, things have moved a notch higher. Right from communication, document management, monitoring and evaluation, to information storage, nothing remains where it was a couple of years ago. You no longer have to carry clipboards around to do your inspections or pile files in the office. You no longer have to wait for your field service employees to return to the office before you can receive reports. By using a field service management software like FieldElite, you have it all done at a click. 

With FieldElite, you’ve got everything under control right from the comfort of your office. Provided you’re doing what you need to do and posting updates using the app, the rest will fall into place. Your employees will receive updates from you and vice versa. If there is a client who needs attention, they can easily issue a request through the app and the next available field service officer who?s within proximity will pick it up and attend to the customer?s needs. 

Everything is just a click away. Sounds great, right?

FieldElite is a robust field service management software that’s packed with a wide array of tools meant to simplify communication between the office and the field service employees. With FieldElite, you can reach all your engineers at one go. 

Below are a few of the communication features that make FieldElite the software of choice when it comes to field service management.

Simplified Communication

It’s very important to stay in touch with your engineers in the field to monitor the ongoing activities. For this reason, you need to choose a platform that doesn’t complicate the process. You don’t want important information to reach your team late. That would drag your activities.

Fast and effective communication is, therefore, very key in field service. FieldElite has consequently been made to simplify communication in the field service. Its simplicity can be compared to the usual consumer messaging apps. On the back-end, however, there are very many complex procedures executed through refined algorithms meant to process information and generate instant reports for engineers, supervisors, and the rest of the company team members.  

With the FieldElite app, communication is as easy as dropping a message in the team members? inbox. Again, the app?s communication system is centralised and, thus, every communication trail is easily retrievable. You don’t need different apps for messaging, audio and video calling, and document sharing. You have it all in FieldElite. Simply put, FieldElite is an all-in-one field service management tool that ropes in all essential digital modes of communication. 

But what’s the benefit of having all work-related communication in one place? 

With an all-in-one communication platform like FieldElite, you’ll cut down on wasted time and field tech frustration. Again, any urgent information will reach your engineers on time, and none of them will be left out. What’s more? With effective communication, expect the performance of your team to shoot up. 

Consistent Communication

Field technicians, in this case engineers, need to be kept on toes to get the job done. You can only achieve this by communicating with them more often. Therefore, you need a field service management platform that can offer you that. Most field service management software facilitates constant communication with team members in the field. Even so, not all are as good as you expect. So, you’ve got to be a bit more critical when choosing a field service management software for your business. 

A good field service management software is one that enables you to regularly check in with field techs to make sure that they have everything they need. With FieldElite, you can achieve more than this. FieldElite app allows you to communicate with your engineers from time to time through messages, calls, or shared documents. Again, the team gets information at the same time. 

So, how important is regular communication with your business? 

Keeping in touch with your team members in the field helps you build strong relationships with them. Additionally, you can easily spot areas that need improvement that otherwise could have been hidden from your viewpoint. What’s more? Employees feel valued when you check on them from time to time. As a result, this will boost their overall productivity, which contributes positively to the well-being of your business.

So, take your business to another level by making use of FieldElite communication tools to reach out to your engineers at any time.

Two-Way Communication

Communication in field service can only be successful if you can get feedback from your field techs. As such, the field management software should make it easier for your engineers to notify you of anything that needs urgent attention. With the FieldElite app?s communication features, your engineers can give you real-time updates from any device. The app is compatible with any android device, and, therefore, the field techs can use their smart handsets to communicate important information. 

The messaging and calling features are easy to manipulate, and with a little training, anyone can use them easily. Again, FieldElite allows you to make group calls or send many messages at the same time. Therefore, in case you?d like to talk to the entire team, you can choose to make a group call or send out bulk messages. 

Real-Time Updates

With FieldElite, you don’t need to wait until you meet your team to communicate any changes. You can notify your team on any work-related changes anytime, and as many times as is necessary. The good thing about FieldElite is that the information reaches all your engineers instantly and at the same time. Provided there?s strong network coverage, you’ll not have to deal with delayed communication. Again, your field techs can always get back to you in case they need clarifications on some matters.

Timely updates are very necessary for field service management. Field techs that get real-time updates tend to be more productive than those who get information late. At least they can make necessary changes on time to avoid wasting time on tasks that aren’t urgent. Therefore, make use of FieldElite communication features to keep your engineers updated.

Would you like to take your business to another level? Well, it’s time to improve communication with your field techs. Get the FieldElite android app for successful communication with your engineers.

Energy Audit – clearly clear?

An energy audit is an examination of an energy system to ensure that energy is being used efficiently. It is the inspection, survey and analysis of energy flows for energy conservation in a building. Energy audits can be conducted by building managers who examine the energy account of an energy system, checks the way energy is used in its various components, checks for areas of inefficiency or where less energy can be used, and identifies the means for improvement.

An energy audit is often used to identify cost effective ways to improve the comfort and efficiency of buildings. In addition, homes/ enterprises may qualify for energy efficiency grants from central government. Energy audits seek to prioritise the energy uses from the greatest to least cost effective opportunities for energy savings.

An energy audit is an effective energy management tool. By identifying and implementing improvements as identified, savings can be achieved not only on energy bills, but also equipment will be able to attain a longer life under efficient operation. All these mean actual dollar savings.

An energy audit has to be conducted by a competent person with adequate technical knowledge on building services installations, after which he/she comes up with a report recommending plans on the Energy Management Opportunities (EMO) for energy saving.

An energy audit culminates to a written report. This could show energy use for a given time period (for example a year) and the impact of any suggested improvements per year. Energy audit reports are then used to identify cost effective ways to improve the comfort and efficiency of buildings. The energy audit report therefore gives management an understanding of the energy consumption scenario and energy saving plans formulation.
Energy audit reports should always translate into action. No matter how well articulated, the energy management objectives are afterall, an energy audit (EMOs), all the effort will be futile if no action is taken. The link between the audit and action is the audit report. It is therefore important for the audit reports to be understandable for all the target audiences/ readers, all of whom may have diverse needs, hence the reason why they should be clear, concise and comprehensible.

What are the do?s and don’ts when writing energy audit reports?

Avoid technical jargon as much as possible; present information graphically; use different graphics such as pie charts, data tables. Schematics of equipment layouts and digital photos tend to make EMO reports less dry. Some of the energy audit software?s come in handy in the generation of such graphs and charts.
The climax of it all is the recommendations, which should be made very fascinating.

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