8 December 2016 | Herpreet Kaur Grewal
The BIFM has published a guidance note to highlight best practice and identify gaps in performance through operational cost benchmarking for FMs.
The guide has been authored by Mike Packham, partner at Bernard Williams Associates, to complement BIFM's existing Benchmarking Good Practice Guide.
It aims to assist FMs in gaining a comparative view of operational functions, such as maintenance, cleaning, catering and security, against other similar organisations in order to improve efficiencies and save money.
Packham said: "Despite the recession rapidly becoming a thing of the past, prudent organisations continue to keep a close eye on their operational cost base. In this context, this new Guidance Note will help FMs to objectively assess the costs associated with the services they are responsible for providing and ascertain whether or not they are delivering value for money for the required level of performance."
The guidance note covers:
- The data needed for benchmarking, such as annual expenditure, labour input/productivity, performance metric
- The component parts of benchmarking activity i.e. measurement parameters, classification protocol, data analysis
- Tips on how best to present the results
BIFM's research and information manager Peter Brogan said effective benchmarking is essential to strategic FM practice by offering facilities managers a way to assess and demonstrate the added value they bring to their organisation's performance and productivity.
Brogan said: "There are many benefits to using benchmarking as part of a structured process of continuous improvement Not only can it help identify potential process upgrades and achieve a more streamlined approach, resulting in large cost savings and ensuring maximum quality and efficiency, but it can help improve understanding of the strategic role FM plays in business performance."
The guide is free for all facilities management professionals to download here.