FOCUS INTERVIEW
OPPOSITES ATTRACT
-eff Dewing CEO of Cloudfm explains to Sara Bean how going against the grain
has helped him build a successful business
The lack of influence FMs have at
Boardroom level has long been a
problem, with concerns that the sector
is still excluded from strategic decision
making. What if FM providers insisted
that the only way they’d agree to
provide FM services to an organisation
depended on stakeholders – including
the C-suite – engaging with them directly
throughout the duration of the contract?
This would go against the prevailing
wisdom that suppliers must bend to
the will of clients who’d prefer FM takes
a back-room role. It’s this ambitious
approach that has helped Cloudfm
become a key influencer within FM in the
10 years since its launch.
Ambition combined with going against
the grain are key to the career success
40 NOVEMBER 2021
of JeŽ Dewing, CEO of Cloudfm who has
even written a book about doing the
opposite. He started out as a refrigeration
and air-conditioning engineer; where a™ er
achieving an unheard of goal of becoming
a supervisor at just age 19, moved into
management roles, progressing through
a number of key FM companies to board
director level at FM companies with £100
million turnovers. His experiences at both
grass roots and management level helped
inform his opinion of FM and how to avoid
some of the bad habits that are endemic to
the sector.
He explains: “One common thread of
the industry is that of bad behaviour, not
because of bad people but in having no
choice due to the environment where
people are overpromising and under
delivering. That has been the market’s
fault too; promising to make it 20 per
cent cheaper, take the work and try and
deliver later. This pushes performance into
a downward spiral and you get a cyclical
process whereby an FM services provider
wins the contract, then upsets the client by
failing to deliver. The client goes back out
to market and employs another company
where performance is no diŽ erent and so it
goes on and on.”
He continues: “The problem is that no
one has ever been brave or courageous
enough to say, ‘guys we need a reset’.
We need to change the way we all think
because otherwise we’ll keep pushing a
square peg through a round hole. We’re an
intelligent species so why are we behaving
so unintelligently? I realised it didn’t