Facilities Manager of the Year
Excellence in Customer Service
Excellence in Product Development
Service Provider of the Year - Large
Service Provider of the Year - SME
Impact on Organisation and Workplace
Innovation in Technology and Systems
Learning and Career Development
Rising talent in Facilities Management
13 October 2014
Support services company Carillion has secured itself the BIFM Award for Large Service Provider of the Year for its work in a long-standing £20 million hybrid-managing agency through which it has a direct service delivery contract with British Gas/Centrica.
Six hundred people are deployed on the contract, within a business model tailored for Centrica that has proved successful for the company and for Carillion. The contract was first managed when Carillion acquired Mowlem in 2002.
Carillion has been providing FM services including catering, cleaning, security, front-of-house, reception, and building fabric maintenance and mechanical and electrical engineering to Centrica/British Gas since 2005.
Services provided across a range of sites include archiving, pest control, landscaping and gritting. A consolidated total FM service package is made available to sites that require it.
Carillion was chosen as award-winner for demonstrating its ability to excel in a number of areas, especially staff training and the achievement of green targets.
Carillion places a lot of emphasis on its staff and it states: "Our people are at the heart of our business and we understand that to deliver an excellent service, we need happy, motivated colleagues that enjoy working for us. We undertake a series of initiatives that aid people and talent management, succession and recognition."
It has developed a contract specific award programme called BEST (Brilliant Excellent Superb Terrific) that provides recognition and reward to its staff. One front of house supervisor received this award and said: "I felt really humble when receiving the award from the work I have been doing on the account I am aware of the talented team that we have." The award is also given in front of other staff, so an employee's work is recognised by other colleagues.
A system is also in place that allows employees to give "simple thank you cards" as a means of instant recognition. They can be used by anyone on the team and are a quick way to acknowledge and appreciate another colleague's work.
Developed by Carillion's business improvement team specifically for the facilities team on this contract, the Facilities Management Practitioners Certificate programme (FMPC) can be tailored to the needs of the client and customers. In essence, FMs on the contract are "continually developing in a way to directly benefit our customer".
Carillion's approach to developing staff has been successful at attracting recruits. One said: "The main reason for originally wanting to work for Carillion was due to the training and development opportunities here and I haven't been disappointed by these since I joined in January 2014."
The FM team consists of 44 people who are dedicated to the contract including 17 site-based FMs. The wider supporting team then consists of central finance, commercial, projects, engineering, business improvement, health and safety, small site support teams and business performance teams. Operating as one team with a "shared set of values, commitments, identity and a common goal", the total facilities staff constitutes 600 people within the UK.
One of the firm's main achievements has been reaching key waste targets, which included a reduction of carbon emissions. Carillion has been recognised as a finalist in the latest environment and energy awards in the category of Innovation Award for Energy and Waste.
One of the ways it has achieved this is through a building and environmental management system (BEMS) strategy developed by the Carillion team that has been rolled out across its entire portfolio to help achieve carbon reduction targets on an energy-efficiency standard at each site. This is based on a number of factors such as health and safety requirements, air standards and guidelines and builder user comfort the strategy focuses on demand controlled heating, ventilation and cooling at each site so that only the energy needed is used.
Before the BEMS was implemented Carillion says it embarked on a communications campaign to ensure that customers were comfortable with the changes being made. It says this has "resulted in fewer complaints regarding heating, ventilation and cooling at each site as requirements are carefully monitored and facilities managers informed if the temperature drops below comfort levels".
Its waste reduction approach has delivered "significant savings across the contract" too, through monthly monitoring and waste reporting and it is now achieving "zero waste to landfill" across the contract.