Eye On

Facility management is the work that starts at handover. Machinery and mechanical plant have to be serviced rather than run to failure, air-conditioning has to hold through a Dubai summer, power, water and waste have to keep moving, and the automation, network and security systems installed during the fit-out have to keep working after the contractors leave. Eye On's scope, as it set it out in its 2024 material, covers that range: automation, machinery, on-site service, network, security, air-conditioning, electricity, water and waste management.

The work divides in two. Planned maintenance runs to a schedule, with each system inspected and serviced at set intervals, so that parts are changed on a calendar rather than after a breakdown. Reactive work is whatever the schedule does not catch, and it is judged on how quickly someone arrives. A facility management contract is normally measured on both, and on the record that shows what was done and when.

The customer is usually the party responsible for a building rather than the person using it: an owner, a landlord, a managing agent, or a company that occupies floors and wants one company to call for anything mechanical. Dubai makes that a demanding job. Towers are dense, cooling and electrical systems run hard through the summer, and a building that is not maintained shows it in running costs and in complaints from tenants.

Eye On was presented with the rest of the Dubai businesses in the portfolio's 2024 group material, where it took the November page of the group calendar, printed with the Sheikh Zayed Road office and the group web address. The company's own line on that page described it as “your strategic partner in facility excellence”, promising better efficiency and better-run operations. Inside the portfolio the two sides fit together: what Apaniot installs, Eye On keeps running.