Doha Festival City (Qatar)
Doha Festival City, the first retail mall in Qatar for Al-Futtaim, celebrates the best in entertainment, retail and hospitality. With a gross building area of 433,000sqm, and a gross leasable area of 244,000 sqm, the QAR 6 billion mixed-use development includes the biggest mall in Qatar and one of the largest entertainment and retail developments in the Gulf.
Doha Festival City is a destination with a world-class entertainment complex, and will be home to indoor and outdoor attractions unique to Qatar. This comprehensive mix of entertainment– from Qatar’s first VOX 4D cinema complex with 18 digital screens, to outdoor spaces for exercise and cycling is designed to appeal to all ages. In addition, Doha Festival City will delight visitors with four unique theme parks, including “Angry Birds World” – the first of its kind in the Middle East, “Snow Dunes” – Qatar’s first indoor snow park, “Juniverse” – an edutainment park for children that harnesses the power of dynamic learning and “Virtuocity” – created exclusively for teens and adults, the park delivers an immersive digital experience.
Currently home to IKEA which has been trading since 2013, Doha Festival City will have more than 500 carefully selected international and local brands, many of which will be making their Qatar debut, including Harvey Nichols and recently opened Monoprix. As a ‘smart mall’ it offers innovative digital options to enhance consumer experience and is easily accessible and offering 8,000 smart parking spaces. The project will also see the addition of a five-star hotel and convention center which will break ground in 2017, opening in early 2019.
Challenge
The implementation of MRI Evolution within Doha Festival City was divided into two phases.
“The main drivers for the first phase were increased efficiency via a structured and streamlined reactive maintenance and PPM process. The second phase would focus on the integration of MRI Evolution with Doha Festival City’s existing BMS and financial systems,” explained Greg Older, Product Specialist for MRI Middle East.
“A key challenge during the first phase was one of logistics; gathering data for 20,000 maintainable assets across a 244,000 sqm site was no small task, especially within the tight project deadlines dictated by the publicly announced opening event. However, MRI Software’s expertise and experience in the management of large-scale projects allowed for Doha Festival City to capture and provide the required data within the allotted time.”
“Another challenge was the utilization of a mobile solution across a culturally diverse team of technicians; many of which had not been exposed to this technology in the past. Due to MRI’s world class training and easy to use MRI Evolution Go mobile application, the team found the transition to a paperless PPM and reactive process painless,” added Older.
In terms of delivery, MRI Evolution was tailored to provide Doha Festival City with a system to better manage reactive and planned preventative maintenance, allowing task specific performance monitoring, as well as a top down view across all FM operational activities. Starting with the logging of a complaint or issue reported by staff, retailers or mall visitors within the MRI Evolution Helpdesk, all the way through to task completion and closure.
MRI succeeded in overcoming the management challenges faced with asset management by utilizing the features of MRI Evolution, which includes extensive asset management and PPM capabilities.
Outcome
MRI Middle East proposed the implementation of an MRI Evolution System which includes Asset Management, Planned Preventative Management (PPM) and a Facilities Helpdesk for the mall. The mall’s stock items will also be managed by using the Stores Module, and the MRI Evolution Go Workforce Mobility Solution.
Trevor Hill, General Manager of Doha Festival City Mall explains, “We have used various CAFM systems in the past, but immediately understood the value of having a phased approach to the delivery provided by MRI Evolution. In line with our ‘smart mall’ approach, the simplicity of the system allows us to configure the elements to our requirements, from logging a helpdesk call, right through to integration with the mall’s BMS system for automated maintenance management. We are very pleased with the results so far.”
In line with the mall’s objective to provide more mobility to staff and to use less paper, MRI Evolution Go Workforce Mobility Solutions provides the perfect solution by reducing the reaction time, and capturing the right information throughout the lifecycle of each task.
The next phase of the project will include building a custom-made App on MRI Evolution Go to enable their resources to deliver maximum productivity.
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