FM Spotlight

Priyanka Kathiresan - Student at Pratt Institute

Published on October 7, 2021 

Priyanka Kathiresan is pursuing a master's degree in Facilities management at the Pratt Institute. She is an intern at Enstoa, where she works on digitizing spaces and assets of about 100,000 to 3 million square feet for hospitals and healthcare environments in and around New York. She also holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture. She was awarded the IFMA NYC Chapter’s Worthy Student FM Scholarship.

Congratulations to Pratt FM Graduate Student Priyanka Kathiresan for winning a scholarship with the IFMA foundation. I a glad that she is receiving this recognition, having seen her shine in Facilities Management, both as a former student, as well as an intern in our firm.
- Matthias Ebinger, Visiting Assistant Professor, FM MS Pratt Institute

What is one thing no one knows about you?

During my high school, I was appointed as the school pupil leader for my house. This opportunity made me realize the role and responsibility of leadership. Being a leader, I learnt to organize and be more detail-oriented towards achieving the goal of conquering the house of the year award. Being proactive and inquisitive are some of the skills I acquired at the time.

How did you get into the Facilities/Workplace field?

As soon as I completed my bachelor’s in architecture in one of the top institutes in India, I was more interested to pursue management in built environments. During my bachelor’s degree course, I was volunteering at the urban design collective which was an organization to create awareness about the state of the city in a fun and absorbable way. At the time, I worked on a pilot project to create awareness about the existing rivers in the city and how they can be cleaned to be utilized for domestic purposes since the rivers were polluted. There was also scope for initiating water transport within the city.

This was the time; I recognized the importance of the facilities within a city. Having closely studied designing built environments, I was curious to understand the mechanism of operating and maintaining a building without a disruption. All the architectural projects that I have worked on so far has enhanced my passion to understand the structure of the building and how it is up and running after construction. Therefore, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in facilities management at the Pratt Institute, New York City.

Tell us about a favorite project highlight.

At Enstoa we work on digitalizing assets and spaces for hospitals and healthcare environments. I was amazed by the speed of processing and capturing spaces of about 100,000 square feet in the span of a day or two with precise details including measurements, photographs, square footage area and the 3D volume. Working with Revit and BIM360 provides advanced solutions to healthcare building owners to manage their inventories better. I enjoyed organizing the asset data and sorting the 3D model which resulted in storing smaller bytes. We also created standards and templates to store the plan drawings and components data. Overall, this experience taught me the value of time and how milestones are accomplished much faster and accurate through automation.

What is your greatest success story?

During my post-graduation, I completed my thesis on the concept of reliability center maintenance. With my research and findings, I was able to gain an understanding of the best practices in the field of operations and maintenance to a great extent. I also successfully presented my thesis to the head of the department, thesis advisor and a few other professors, after which I was selected to present my thesis concept at the International Construction Project Management Association Conference, where professionals from all over the world attended. This was an incredible experience!

Tell us about a challenge or obstacle that you face in the Real Estate/Facilities world.

There is a significant gap between technology and managing a facility. There is a need for organizations to establish standards and templates. Failing to track the assets and spaces can create complications at a later stage, especially during renovations and relocations. This can be solved by taking advantage of different software solutions and implementing digital technology through reality capture to identify discrepancies of area calculation from the original blueprints. Reality capture also helps estimate the temperature, light intensity, and air quality of rooms at different times of the day.

What learning experience would you pass onto future FMs?

Smart work is more important than hard work. It is important to be productive to generate precise solutions to convoluted problems. It can be fascinating to realize that if complex projects can be completed in short durations, there will be more time to innovate, develop and produce beyond the scope of the project. Always for any given job find a means to complete it with less labor effort and faster without a compromise on the quality. With today's technological resources it is possible to achieve a high degree of automation and digitalization to increase process efficiencies.