An independent company that provides Consulting, Project Management and Technology Integration services, specialising in data centres: FMevolution

“Our role is to understand your requirements, provide the framework, and then deliver to that commitment.”

FMevolution is project management and consulting business specialising in property and facility management solutions which need high reliability, strong project management, and practical risk management. Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, the company specialises in whole of life solutions i.e. from facility creation, operation and disposal. Unlike traditional project managers, FMevolution has subject matter expertise and experience focussed around mission critical facilities, specifically data centres and telecommunications exchange facilities.

Founded on 19th of June 2007, by Verghese Jacob, FMevolution consultants and project managers have assisted their clients to deliver leading global design data centres in Australia and overseas. The team has the right mix of experience, dynamics and capability to deliver any complicated project.

OUR VISION

Collaborating and innovating with clients, thought leaders, technology suppliers, and design teams to develop and deliver world leading energy, water and capital efficient data centres. 

Recognition comes from client relationships built on trust, repeat work and a respected reputation. 

OUR MISSION

Assisting our clients to become better global citizens by adopting leading environmental sustainability benchmarks, while accomplishing new levels of capital efficiency for every data centre project. 

Why is this important? Is estimated that data centres utilise about 5% of all power consumed globally. If we can find ways to improve energy and water efficiency, then we reduce the environmental footprint of data centres e.g. consumption of natural resources, atmospheric contamination, waste products and global warming. 

Conversing With Verghese Jacob, Director of FMevolution 

What inspired you to start FMevolution?

I started FMevolution with a simple business goal of helping clients to plan, build and operate world class data centres in Australia. I felt that with Australia’s stable government, access to good services infrastructure, global connectivity with low latency, low cost of power, engineering and construction capability, that one day would become a preferred location for consolidating APAC and global cloud computing infrastructure. However, the main reason was dissatisfaction while working at my previous employer. As a technology executive, I was good at reducing staff headcount, getting staff whom remained to work harder, reducing the cost of vendor supplied plant, equipment and services, and speeding up project delivery but I could not convince senior management to spend a few percent extra on capital to adopt proven technology innovation and achieve much better ROI over the life of the assets being built.

Tell us about your first project. Was it successful?

Our first project was to identify land to build a 50MW data centre in Melbourne for an international investor. The project was high profile because of the investor and lifted our profile in Australia. But due to the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) the project did not move beyond the land options being identified and shortlisted. 

Can you talk the people who motivated or aided you in your journey?

My old friend and colleague Gary Stevenson (retired) helped and supported to transform this business and IT infrastructure for future excellence and growth. Now FMevolution is ready for the next decade. Furthermore, I will always be grateful to all the customers that took a chance on us, the business partners that supported us and my team at FMevolution that through their skills, expertise and dedication delivered these incredible results.

Discuss about the milestones which the company has achieved in the past decade.

We have delivered the most data centres of any independent project manager or client representative in Asia-Pacific - over 150MW of staged IT capacity. Our achievements include delivering Australia’s first Uptime Institute Certified Constructed Facility, (Metronode), two data centres built that won the Master Builders Award (Pacnet), and Australia’s first hyper scale data centres (AirTrunk). Our innovative, commercial and structured approach to business has saved our clients millions in the development of their data centres. CIO outlook Magazine July 2016 Issue: shortlisted FMevolution among the “25 Most Promising Project Management Solutions Providers” in the APAC Region. 

What drives you to succeed and what does the future holds for the company?

Dissatisfaction is what drives me, I believe that “there has to be a better way” of doing something. There always is! This principle along with our perseverance has led us to be recognized as a leader in this arena in Australia. We have always completed all of our projects and not walked away when circumstances were extremely difficult. FMevolution consists of good hearted, talented people whom have always been ethical in their dealings even in the most challenging circumstances. In the future we will be expanding in the Asia- Pacific region more specifically in China. We have established a company structure in China and spent the past 3 years building quality business relationships. 

Acknowledge the Leader 

Verghese Jacob, Director: Verghese began his working career in the Australian telecommunications industry where he advanced through the ranks of senior professional and management positions. He worked in areas such as corporate safety and environment, business unit risk management, carrier facilities access and building services design and construction delivery. Verghese was accountable for delivering the critical building infrastructure core to some of the largest network rollouts seen in the Australian Telco industry. 

Since establishing FMevolution in 2007, Verghese has continued to program or project manage the delivery of world leading design data centres for clients such as Woolworths, Pacnet, DXC.technology, Metronode and AirTrunk. He is an alumnus of University of Adelaide.

“We assist our customers to reach their strategic goals by identifying business improvement opportunities and unlocking hidden value.”