Cross charging your Facilities Management outsourcing

Cross charging your Facilities Management outsourcing

I know I have banged on before about a simple and clear pricing pro-forma for tender returns but this blog should also help if you need to recharge your FM costs to various internal departments.  This can be tricky, if the specification has changed, some departments may need more 'wooden dollars' that they were not expecting, or the way in which your pro-forma is designed can allow bidders to profile a price you were not expecting.  Usually during a tender re-charging is the last thing on your mind.  Therefore, here are my top tips for a successful tender and simple recharge afterwards.

1.       A clear and visible winner

Key is a pricing model that creates a clear winner. You need to be sure that you know who the winner is.  This avoids challenges from losing bidders and makes your internal approval process less stressful.

2.       Tailor your service to meet your budget

Sometimes you may not be sure what level of service you can afford.  Use your tender to ensure you maximise the quality of service for your budget. There are different options for input or output specifications so doing this could be the key to fewer disagreements when recharging departments.

3.       A transparent elemental build-up of costs

If you are recharging this is necessary – but it is also necessary if you have a changing estate or workforce.  Granularity is important to consider, you need enough detail to recharge and analyse prices but too much can be like trying to see the wood through the trees.

4.       Consistent parameters for all bidders

It is essential that parameters such as building data and inflation assumptions are the same for all bidders to allow an ‘apples for apples’ comparison.  However, things change, so it is also essential that if the parameter changes you know the impact on your costs. 

5.       Audit, audit, audit

Building in some audit tools is good practice so you know that your pricing model is crunching numbers correctly.  You do not need a degree in financial analysis to do this, some basic arithmetic tests and checks are usually sufficient.