Under the reshuffle, completed prior to Christmas, the newly formed Chesterton Management Services (CMS) becomes home to facilities management operation Chesterton Workplace Management and property arm Chesterton Property and Asset Management.
Workplace Management's 'FM tool box' that includes procurement services, performance monitoring of subcontractors and accounting to American reporting standards will now be offered to landlords as well as occupiers.
Workplace Management MD and divisional MD for CMS, David Walker says the approach has already enabled one client to cut service charges by 18%.
'We realised that the tool box has use in other areas of the market and that the most powerful place is in the area of landlord services, especially service charges,' said Walker.
Describing many managing agents in the property industry as, 'very highly qualified individuals, who sit in their offices,' Walker said procurement of landlord services was typically based on whom the management surveyor happened to know, with little consideration to cost. With no central database of suppliers, they could run into the thousands across the UK – at Chesterton which collects £40 million a year in service charges, 9,000 suppliers have been on the firm's lists in the past.
'When you bring the tool box to this, you can make savings and provide better suppliers,' said Walker who believes that typically a service charge reduction of 10-20 per cent can be achieved by harnessing the group's procurement power and monitoring suppliers.
'We can also react more quickly to problems, for example letting the cleaning company know when there is a problem,' he said.
* In December Chesterton signed up ICL to take on its property and facilities management work across its UK portfolio. The deal runs to 2008 and is valued at £250 million.
Source
The Facilities Business
