Joe Hollander, director of strategic facilities management, Massey University, New Zealand, advocated international benchmarking to his Scottish counterparts when he spoke at an International Workshop on benchmarking held at Glasgow's Caledonian University recently.
Hollander has been in facilities management for 35 years and closely watching what others have been doing worldwide for the past five to six years.
He said Australian and New Zealand higher education facilities managers had joined to help streamline their operations. 'It's a way to strive for excellence in a non-competitive way,' he said.
The Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers and the UK-based Association of University Directors of Estates have information-sharing programmes, and Hollander would urge facilities managers in other industries to do the same. 'If you don't compare and benchmark then you will be out of a job, he said.
One of the improvements to New Zealand Universities to come from benchmarking is a drop in the cost of cleaning the institutions because they have 're-specified' work and looked at the standards needed and the savings to be made by outsourcing.
Hollander's team is comparing campuses with prisons, courts, secondary schools and other institutions to see if they can transfer best practice.
Hollander said New Zealand Universities have been benchmarking since 1994, with detailed systems charting trends in maintenance, cleaning, energy, water and security in place since 1996.
Source
The Facilities Business