Proving our worth

Proving our worth

Following on from the Workplace Futures 2013 debates of the last week I was thinking about how FM can get its seat on the board – get its voice heard – and prove its worth - to the organisation.  In times of budget cuts and shrinking margins FM is seen as an easy target, a non-front line service that won’t matter to the organisations business goals.

Wrong! – here are 5 steps to making FM strategic:

1. Combine the property strategy with the FM service provision

Most organisations (public or private) will grow or shrink their property portfolios to suit their business.  The FM team need to change their delivery model to adapt to this change.  Supporting the workforce in the workplace change – be it space planning or minimising moves disruption will go a long way to maintaining a productive business.

2.Support the workforce and the changing nature of the workplace

Can FM move itself away from the “Facility Manager” to the “Workplace Manager”?  One manages buildings, the other manages workplaces.  The workplace is changing, there is a higher proportion of home workers, field workers and hot-deskers. - Is this a reason for needing less office space?  Providing workplace support will move FM in to areas of ICT, Fleet, and Regus style services – expanding the role of the Facility Manager.

3. Have a demonstrable effect on the businesses goals

Whatever the business, there will be primary business goals.  If the FM service can measure their impact on those business goals, then they will be directly proving their worth to the organisation.  For example, in Local Authorities this could be local employment, training local people or supporting local businesses.  FM can buy local, employ local people and train those employees.  This contributes to the economic development of the local area – and Local Authorities will see this as a benefit.

4. Provide a highly efficient and modern service

In a constantly changing business environment, any service can ill afford to stand still.  There is no getting away from the need to constantly be providing a cost efficient, lean and productive service.  Either if FM is in house or outsourced – innovating through continuous improvement will keep the service modern and cost efficient and be seen less of an easy target.

5. Award Winning

What could be a better endorsement of your FM service than an industry award.  There are many available – Go for it! and don’t just prove your worth to your organisation – Prove it to the industry.

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.

Bravo Richard!

There is one thing I really admire about Sir Richard Branson it is his determination.  He was determined the West Coast Main Line (WCML) bid evaluation was wrong so he publically pursued it and with it, publically embarrassed the very people who would be awarding him a £6bn contract.  Madness you may say?  The golden rule of sales is don’t upset the customer.  I think it’s brilliant to stand up and say no, this isn’t right.

Where does this leave the DfT?  They will have to re-run the WCML bid and endure extra scrutiny from bidders, government and the public on future franchises.  It may change the entire procurement method for rail operators.

Why has this happened?  Branson said FirstGroup’s “numbers didn’t add up”.  The DfT have said “there are mistakes in the way the process has been managed”.  This can mean two things – the financial evaluation was very complicated and it could lead to judgements being made about a price that affect the financial scoring but are not based on the price. 

I too have been involved in complex tenders where you look at the evaluation model and think it could be read in different ways or you find formulae errors.  Did I or the other bidders challenge? No.  It rarely happens. Why?  The golden rule – don’t upset the customer.  You just dust yourself off and go on to the next one.

Bravo Richard.  But has he won a battle only to lose a war?

Only time will tell if Branson’s decision will help or hinder Virgin/Stagecoach in future franchises.  Stagecoach has more to lose in this market – they have 2 existing franchises and are actively pursuing others – Virgin don’t and aren’t.

My advice to organisations running tender processes is to keep the financial evaluation simple, clear and concise.  Don’t over complicate it.  This will help your bidders know where they stand and leave you and them in no doubt who the winner is.

Put it in Context



Bring me a dead cat and all I can tell you is that it was a cat and it is now dead.  Bring me a dead cat and tell me you found it in the middle of the road, what killed it? A car? heat exhaustion? 

What are we talking about?

Context!   -   The difference between road kill and a meal.

Context is critical for people to make up their minds and make decisions.

Recently I did some work with a public sector organisation who wanted to outsource their FM services.  Together we did some work to quantify the savings and the service improvements that would be guaranteed by a service provider.  The client needed to get the project approved by their board made up of people who didn’t know much about FM and elected members who represent the public. 

 “We will save £500,000 by doing this outsourcing”.  Is that good or bad? We don’t know until we attach some context to it.  A £ number is just that – a number – it has no meaning without putting it in context. 

“We will save 0.5% of the organisations budget”.  That doesn’t sound very good. 

“We will save 15% of our current expenditure”.  That sounds good! 

This means something internally but for a public sector organisation who is accountable to the public it may mean little.

“We will be able to employ an additional 20 front line jobs to support the community”.  That sounds great! 

Jobs put the sheer quantity of iphones
sold in to context for the audience

The presentation we put together had 3 numbers on it…

“By outsourcing, we will save £500,000 (15% of our budget) which is the same as employing an additional 20 people in front line jobs in the community”

The board now understood the importance of doing the outsourcing both for the organisation and the people they provide services to.  Needless to say the questions were not “Why should we do this?” but “How soon can it be done?”

How to win Competitive Dialogue bids – Inspired by Team Sky Pro Cycling and British Cycling

The Competitive Dialogue bidding process can take a long time – it is a multi stage, high cost procurement method.   However it is popular in the public sector as it clarifies the requirements and solutions between buyers and bidders and helps ensure bids are compliant.  There is a lot of contact with the customer and therefore a lot of opportunity to influence the direction of the bid.  But how do you do that amongst other bidders trying to do the same thing?

 

The head of Team Sky and British Cycling, Dave Brailsford, knows what it takes to win.  He has transformed British Cycling in to world beaters.  Over the past 2 years I have applied Dave Brailsford’s philosophy to my own bidding activities at the company I work for.

Dave Brailsford talks about a strategy called ‘Controlling Variables’.  This means that you take into account conditions which may vary during the bid (and possibly change the results) and control them to remove or minimise their affect on the result of the bid in your favour.

I see each bid requirement as a variable that needs to be controlled and managed so that the proposal is perceived as the best.  I can then start to see the variables I will be best at amongst the competition and the ones I need to improve. 

The Competitive Dialogue bid process is essentially a great big arms race. There are a lot of requirements to get right in terms of commercial proposals, service delivery methods, proposed operational people, the price and the quality of the written submission. 

There is no doubt you need to compete with the other bidders on all these variables.  Controlling the direction of discussion in customer meetings is important to ensure that the bid is perceived as the best, most innovative and compelling.

The way to do this is to make sure nothing is left to chance In terms of knowledge, preparation, other work pressures on the team, support, stakeholder knowledge, research, analysis of dialogue meetings and so on.  Work everything through in detail. It is all about finding the incremental advantage – the nugget of information or idea that the other bidder hasn’t thought about that improves your bid.

Dave Brailsford calls this – “performance by the aggregation of marginal gains.” He says, “It means taking the 1% from everything you do; finding a 1% margin for improvement in everything you do. That's what Team Sky and British Cycling try to do from the mechanics upwards.   For example, If a mechanic sticks a tyre on, and someone comes along and says it could be done better, it's not an insult - it's because they are always striving for improvement, for those 1% gains, in absolutely every single thing they do."

Naturally, all these tiny gains can add up to large gain – and that’s the approach that has underpinned Britain's phenomenal success in cycling.

So if a bid can be the best and the bid team performs to the absolute highest level, this is success from a process point of view.  If you start looking at the outcome in terms of just the result it is impacted on by so many other variables that you are putting yourself and your team under an massive amount of unnecessary pressure.

The one thing you are in charge of is being your best. It’s therefore critical to have the right people with knowledge and motivation. 

This is the most important variable. It is one you are totally in control of and can not be influenced by other companies.  The behaviour, attitude and motivation of your dialogue team is as important, if not more, than the actual nuts and bolts of the bid. 

There is always room for improvement here because to keep going for (in some cases) up to a year in Competitive Dialogue is such a monumental effort.  To carry on making the investment must largely be in the mind. That is where there is an opportunity. Psychology is everything.

After a long process, put yourself in the best place to win

In a Competitive Dialogue situation, part of the psychological armoury is that rivals simply look at the investment being made and think: well, there's no point competing. That is a clear advantage that didn’t need any innovation. 

This is one variable that each bidder cannot control, that is the rate of progression of the other bidders. So, if you perform better than other bidders and progress faster, you will cover more ground, leave less to chance or luck and be in the best position to win.

The power of social media in highways services

Here he goes again, another wacky idea. Can we not we just stick to Ceefax I hear you say?
Well no.
Social media is going to be vital to our market place in the years to come. Why?
Because we are going to have no money to do, the things we have done before and we need people to do it for us.
That's Localism I hear you say!
Correct – localism is about letting people do stuff and the power of social media is letting the public do stuff for you too. Let me give you an example…
What's the fastest way to get news these days? BBC? No. SKY? No. MSN? No.
Twitter
Seriously, if you want to know what the latest things going on around the world are – look at twitter.
Why is this?
There are 6 million members of twitter. That means there are 6 million news reporters working free for it. The result (as long as you can see the wood through the trees) is instant news.
Now how is that relevant to us?
Well… Our business is generally about keeping the public satisfied with public services. So what's the best way of figuring that out? Interact with them - ask, understand, listen then act.
If the public are happy with public services, councillors are happy which means officers are happy which means we get praised for doing a good job.
So what can we do?
Listen – use tools like twitter, Facebook to interact with people and find out what they want and what their problems are.
Tell – use tools like twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogger to tell the public what we are doing and why. It is psychologically proven people won't complain if they are told what will happen – even if it's bad!
Assist – use Yahoo Answers, wiki's, to help people find out about what they want to know- then they won't come and ask.
A number of opportunities we are working on have an increasing role for us in customer services, if you want help or advice please get in touch. I'd be happy to help you trial these tools.

Changing times. Opportunities for FM.

Tony Baldry MP has set up a New All-Party Parliamentary Group for Excellence in the Built Environment its remit will be to present an holistic, cohesive, overarching view from all sectors of demand, planning, designing, constructing, managing and maintaining the built environment and its external landscape. (1)

Does this mean FM will get a bigger voice at the top of government?  Probably in some capacity, I hope BIFM takes up the baton, it’s a golden opportunity to shout about the importance of FM.

The government needs to reduce costs of its own estate and provide better value for money from projects that are fit for the 21^st century i.e more sustainable (2)

Does this mean there is opportunity for FM companies? Definitely! But…

The emergency budget gave little indication for when and how big.  We expect more outsourcing, but IT outsourcing companies are bracing for large cuts.  The government lied about schools capital expenditure – saying it would stay in place and then Michael Gove MP stops all BSF projects that have not signed a contract. (3)

Local Govt budget cuts – 25% (back to 1996 levels) are not going to come through doing services, faster, cheaper, leaner or even, dare I say it, greener.  It will come through providing them differently, but how?  FM can help the public sector change the way it provides services, and we must grab these opportunities.

Contracts are going to be won by organisations that challenge the norm, aren’t afraid to test wacky ideas with clients and innovate so much that its not the goal posts that change it’s the whole game.  Some clients want “more for the same” or “the same for less”.  Perhaps now clients will want “less for even less”!

FM needs to be ready, ready with the ideas, ready with the right people on board, ready to change so that we can help transformation of the public sector and really move FM up the organisational importance ladder!

(1)http://www.biid.org.uk/news/New%20All-Party%20Parliamentary%20Group%20for%20Excellence%20in%20the%20Built%20Environment

(2)http://www.ogc.gov.uk/About_OGC_news_10072.asp

(3) http://www.fm-world.co.uk/news/fm-industry-news/tories-axe-shameful-school-rebuilding-programme/