In Strategic Partnership with the Client

Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2023, Dome Facility Services Group has been providing comprehensive, integrated facility management (FM) services to the Hungarian real estate market while adhering to its proven values.

Characterizing the domestic FM market and Dome’s role in it, Gábor Décsi MRICS, Managing Partner at Dome Group, highlights to Diplomacy&Trade that “in the past 20 years, the Hungarian FM market has been developing a lot almost from the scratch. Since the FM industry is quite new all over the world, by now we hit the average international standards in terms of professionalism. Looking around the regional FM markets in some aspects, we are ahead of other countries. In details, in Hungary the market prefers integrated FM services, and the SLA-based quality measurement is wildly applied. In Hungary, in terms of the innovation capabilities, the applications of cutting-edge technologies, and implementation of the modern industrial solutions, I believe that Dome is always in the leading position. One fine example for that is that today’s most frequent topic is the energy crisis and Dome’s energy advisory division, Dome Energy is already 12 years old! For us, the development and maturity of the Hungarian FM industry is always a top priority since our credo is that the bigger the cake the larger our proportion. Therefore, we are spreading the best practice and not hiding from our competitors.”

Wide scope of services
Facility management is a support service. In this respect, Gábor Décsi says his company believes in the one stop shop concept that means providing all the services that relate to any of the building’s expenses. “We cover such a wide scope that even listing all is almost impossible. But to show the complexity, here is a list of the services we provide: Technical FM (maintenance, troubleshooting, dispatcher etc.), Infrastructural FM (cleaning, security, landscaping, roadworks, winter services, pest control, etc.), project management, CAPEX management, energy advisory services (procurement, reconciliation, optimalization etc.), FM advisory (technical DD, FM audit etc.). The required capacity and the professional knowledge for all the services we provide can be found in-house. This means that we are operating a large organization with a full scope of professionals.”

Acting according to values
The Dome Group highlights four values as the most important: professionalism, market orientation, partnership and people-centered approach. As to how these appear in the day-to-day activities of the company, the Managing Partner stresses that “we use these values in our day-to-day life like a lighthouse for the ships or a compass or a bible. This means that during our professional life – with both the clients and the employees –, we behave, react and think according to our values. Say if we suddenly stop when coming across an issue and we don’t immediately know what decision to make or what the proper answer would be, we usually think of our values and we suddenly get the right answer. Another example is that we set up and operate what we call ‘social aid fund’ for our colleagues who live in poor conditions and in every semester, our employees are entitled to apply for financial help if a financial difficulty arises in their private life.”

An alliance of FM service providers
Dome Group is a founding member of the 21st FM European Alliance. As Gábor Décsi explains, this Alliance is a very prosperous cooperation between independent and locally strong FM companies. “The basic idea to bring the Alliance to life was that more and more multinational and even more global enterprises outsource their FM services to regional or global FM providers. On this market, there are only a few FM service providers who can compete and all the local players are disqualified from this game if there is no alternate solution. That is why we established the alliance in 2016. We already have won large FMCG multinational FM outsource tenders and there is also ongoing progress for further FM mandates.”

Vision of cooperation
In addition to the general facility management activities, Dome Group offers energy management services under the Dome Energy brand, as the Managing Partner mentioned, and leasehold development services under the Dome Fit-out brand, while its Dome Real Estate Consulting business provides a full range of facility management consultancy services. Regarding the benefits all this means for the Group’s facility management customers, Gábor Décsi points out that “our vision of the cooperation with our customers is that we strive to build strategic partnerships. This means that we do not have hundreds of clients, but with those clients we began to work for, we usually get more and more buildings, sites, and projects. This concept brings the need to develop a wide range of real estate services. On the other hand, this cooperation makes life easier for both parties, there are no long procurement processes, the quality is permanent, and the clients can always rely on a strategic FM partner. This strategy might also be why we do not often lose mandates. The churn rate is very low, and this is one of the key success factors of the constant 20% per annum growth rate in the past almost 20 years.”

Fulfilling ESG requirements
Nowadays, sustainability is important in basically all fields of business. “In the real estate industry, ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) initiatives have appeared in recent years, primarily from the financial aspects. Nowadays in our industry, almost everything resonates ESG, so our life is also affected by its elements. Through our long-lasting activity in field of energy with the environmental aspects in mind, we are deeply involved in different projects on our clients’ side. This is the Environment aspect. As for the Social element, since Dome Group is a large employer with more than 750 employees in our company, the support and the management of our employees are crucial and is one of the most important cornerstones. To put it simply: our product is our staff, so we have to treat them like we treat our treasure. Finally, the Governance part comes through the outstanding leadership of the entire Dome Group’s management. We always take care of the long-term value creation instead of the short-term one-off profit items. We are all motivated to build a strong and stable enterprise,” he says.

Significant growth potential
Now, with the pandemic (hopefully) over, the facility management industry is looking forward to further growth. “Usually in this sector, one used to say that the annual growth potential is around the annual inflation rate. This trend was valid for the past two decades. However, both the pandemic and the current energy crisis show that the role of facility management in the real estate market is much more important than many people thought. We are the experts of health safety issues, energy consumption issues, the hybrid workplace topics and so many other areas. So, I believe that in the next two decades, the growth potential will be at least double the average GDP growth rate,” Gábor Décsi concludes.