Inside Arcus with Symon Tomlinson – Technology and Innovation
Technology and innovation sit at the heart of all we do at Arcus Facilities Management. Our in-house developed technology drives efficiency, sustainability, safety, and improved experiences for our colleagues and customers.
Our SMaRT (Smarter Maintenance and Realtime Technology) Hub helps to make facilities management simpler, smarter, and quicker, by bringing innovative technology to our services.
Helping us to lead the way in FM technology is Symon Tomlinson, Head of Solutioning, who provides our customers with applications that optimises their estates and ensures they’re running efficiently. Find out more about Symon’s role below:
Hi, I’m Symon, the Head of Solutioning here at Arcus – which means I oversee the development of software applications that benefit our business, colleagues, and customers.
I’ve been with Arcus for 12 years, starting as a remote technician within our refrigeration bureau. Over that time, Arcus has been active in designing and implementing technologies – that we own the intellectual property rights to – that underpin and support the framework of facilities management services we provide.
The traditional landscape of managing spaces and services has evolved over the years and facilities management needs to adapt to evolving industry standards. Technology and innovation will continue to be one of the primary differentiators between FM companies, alongside the level of service provided.
Our development team supports the continuous innovation of our existing applications and works with our customers to create specialist and bespoke applications to meet their goals. The breadth of requests are limitless. Anything from requests that improve our service delivery, such as predictive rules to detect faults before they become significant; to IoT projects to monitor equipment that highlight irregularities and gives early indications of issues. All of these can reduce unscheduled site visits and energy usage – which in turn drives down carbon emissions for our customers and our business alike.
At Arcus, our technology brings significant gains in efficiency and productivity, data management and analysis, asset management, predictive maintenance, and remote monitoring. All items that our customers really value, from the Facilities Manager reviewing realtime data of their site and looking at faults, to the Energy Manager reviewing consumption and asset condition across their estate, to Executive Management looking at their full estate strategy and performance.
When asked about the future of technology in facilities management – everyone in roles like mine will tell you the same: Artificial Intelligence. But this isn’t a far-off, intangible concept. At Arcus, for some time now we’ve been already applying machine learning algorithms to our applications as a first step into the AI environment. This already leads to a better service for customers, and its growth will only accelerate as we grow our proposition and capabilities and as more customers decide it’s the right time to invest in their estate to unlock significant cost, energy, and carbon savings through technology.
