spiral when the weather takes a turn for the worse. We have also seen a reported decline in related near miss accidents on our client sites.
Notably, the changes in our industry have been mirrored by the way our client’s businesses have been transformed. On the one hand, the shift towards a just-in-time world has meant that few businesses can afford downtime due to bad weather. Additionally, the world has become far more litigious: today’s FM professionals are very conscious of the liabilities of trips, slips and falls that can include criminal sanctions for breaches of health and safety law. Many clients require a very high level of assurance and transparency. The days of a gritting company leaving a sheet of paper saying they’ve visited are long gone. Instead, many organisations expect pre-service notifications delivered via app or web portal, real time service delivery notifications and meticulously detailed reports afterwards – all backed with GPS data. To further satisfy this demand for certainty, we also provide full liability protection to indemnify against risks.
So, has the notoriously unpredictable UK winter been tamed? Maybe that’s going too far. Although the past decade has given us tools to take on unpredictable weather, there are new risks emerging from our increasingly uncertain climate. According to Met Office data, UK winters are trending warmer because of global temperature rises (since the 1960s winters have warmed by around 1.7ºC on average). This might suggest that UK organisations will see less need to protect against snow and ice. However, the averages only tell part of the story as global warming is also bringing more extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. A key issue is that warmer average temperatures are disrupting the global weather systems like the polar vortex and jet stream that determine our weather. For example, as warmer conditions weaken the jet stream, we can see incredibly
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pronounced cold snaps as the UK is chilled by cold air from the Arctic and Northern Europe. In other words, we may experience winters that are on average warmer and wetter but punctuated by bursts of Siberian intensity.
At OUTCO, we believe the next two decades will be defined by how we learn to understand and respond to the changing climate. As well as drawing on the best meteorological data to keep risk profiles for sites up to date, more unpredictable weather will demand even greater agility and the ability to react faster to extreme conditions. An interesting question is whether those conditions might require a different fleet of vehicles or equipment to clear heavier snowfalls or whether the supply chain for de-icing products will have to adapt. Such questions are a reminder that AI, data and IT - while mission critical - ultimately supports a complex logistical operation that requires highly trained and dedicated staff that are working in the toughest conditions. Looking ahead to the next twenty years, one thing I can predict with certainty is that the human element will always matter...
…although some of the advances in robotics and drone technology are pretty extraordinary. Perhaps, we’ll have to revisit this discussion in five years instead.
www.outco.co.uk TOMORROW’S FM | 35
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