Taking over Maintenance from L&T - Status Report as on June 21, 2013
We are on target to takeover maintenance with effect from July 1, 2013.
1. SCMC is overwhelmed and humbled by the trust and support from the community in our preparations for taking over maintenance.
2. As on 21-6-2013, SCMC has received a total of approximately Rs. 1.84 Cr as Ad hoc Maintenance Charges from approx 1275 apartments.
3. Thus, we can honour the Rs 50 lakh payment due to L&T on June 30, 2013.
4. We have chosen Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj Building Operation Pvt. Ltd (JLL) as the overall facility management vendor. SCMC took advantage of the earlier work done by our community volunteers in preparation for takeover- by short-listing seven vendors, showing them around, obtaining quotes, visiting their existing clients, organizing presentations of six of them and short-listing four for further consideration. Our immense thanks to them all.
5. Out of these four short-listed firms, SCMC chose JLL because of their size, reputation, financial strength and lowest quote. We also visited a comparable apartment complex maintained by JLL and discussed their performance with the Association Secretary.
6. By Monday, we will keep the entire file describing the process followed by SCMC for selecting the vendor, for perusal and feedback by any member of South City Community who has paid the ad hoc maintenance charges due.
7. The advance transition team from JLL, with the guidance of volunteers from our community, has been undertaking inspection of various assets/ practices related to security, housekeeping, electrical installations, lifts, water and STP. This will need a few more days to be completed.
These teams have already come across and documented several very disturbing aspects of the current status of assets and maintenance practices. Just to illustrate a few: asset lists not available, fire panels in ‘off’ mode, no log sheets available for any of the DG sets; non-working earth leakage relays in all blocks; electrical panels affected by ingress of rain water; long overdue repairs to arrest seepages in common areas, even ‘waterfalls’ in basements, inadequate sewage treatment capacity etc.
8. JLL, in turn has finalized security, housekeeping, pest control, club-house and maintenance service vendors. The total estimated monthly expenses payable to JLL for these services routed through them is approx Rs 37 lakhs, inclusive of service tax. Details are available on file.
9. One important addition to the services is that the above includes labour component of ‘minor repairs’ inside apartments- e.g., bulb replacement, fixing leaking taps etc. This will be of great use to all of us.
10. We will be finalizing annual maintenance contracts for lifts, electrical installations, STP, water tankers etc over the next few days. These, along with water (BWSSB), electricity (BESCOM) and diesel for DG sets may cost an additional Rs 40 lakhs/ month approximately.
11. Thus our rough estimate of total cost is about Rs 75-77 lakhs/month or Rs.2.5/sq.ft/month, given that we have approx 3.1 million sq.ft. Assuming an average of 35 paise /sq.ft/month as corpus interest, we are looking at a net cost of Rs 2.15-2.25 per sq.ft/month. Of course there are likely to be some adjustments based on actual experience in the first quarter.
12. We will put up the list of apartments from whom we have not received the payment for June, by Monday, June 24 on respective block notice boards and in community Google groups/ website. We are being doubly careful to avoid any inadvertent mistakes, especially the erroneous inclusion apartments that have paid in the list of defaulting apartments. Still, there are bound to be few such cases because of lack of information- e.g., unidentified electronic fund transfers / cheques without apartment numbers, postal delays, overwriting in cheques etc. Residents of apartments so affected are requested to immediately clarify matters with SCMC. This is important to avoid further penal persuasive actions, such as disconnecting DG power supply.
13. SCMC is in the process of establishing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for each aspect, to be monitored and certified on a monthly basis by volunteers in each block and for common areas and assets.
Seeking the continued co-operation from you all,
For South City Maintenance Committee
R. Rajagopalan
Member