Press Releases

OGC to Improve Government Estate Management

A six-month pilot project to assess how government can improve the management and use of its estate begins today.

Launched jointly by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and Occupiers Property Databank, (OPD), an international firm of property experts, it will look at occupancy costs, space use and building and management effectiveness to provide a benchmark figure the government will use to improve its performance and make efficiency savings.

A project board, drawn from OGC, Department for Trade and Industry, the Department for Health, the Home Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Work and Pensions, will draw together a list of key performance indicators.

If the pilot is successful the service will be rolled out to all government departments over a further two and half years.

With a civil estate comprising over 260 individual property centres, occupying over 10 million squares metres of floor space, it currently costs central government around £2 billion a year to manage its estate, so the scope for significant efficiency gains is high.

Commenting on the launch of the pilot, Mike Burt, OGC Director, Government Relocation and Asset Management Division said:

"Effective performance measurement and benchmarking of the way that government operates its Civil Estate is fundamental to achieving longer lasting efficiency gains from managing this enormous and costly estate. I am delighted to be working with OPD on this exciting initiative as they bring a wealth of experience and expertise to the partnership."

Christopher Hedley, Director, OPD comments:

"For the first time we have been asked to produce an overall view of real estate performance not only taking costs and space use into account but critically appraising building and management effectiveness in the same performance assessment.  This will be a fascinating opportunity to compare - on a large scale - key aspects of occupier performance.  For example, how employment density interacts with costs per person and workplace productivity."

Notes to Editors

The Civil Estate comprises over 260 individual property centres and occupies over 10 million square metres of floor space.  Individual departments are accountable for procuring and managing their estates, facilities and workplace portfolios strategically to support effective and efficient service delivery.

Whilst individual departments have systems in place to measure how efficiently they are managing their individual estates (including outsourced facilities management) little has been done to measure the efficiency or effectiveness of the Civil Estate "corporately". It is currently costing central Government (excluding Agencies & NDPBs and the MOD & Health estates) around £2 billion a year to manage its civil estate so the scope for significant efficiency gains is high.

Efficient and effective use of the civil estate is a major focus of both the Efficiency and Lyons implementation programmes being led by OGC. This project therefore aims to put in place for the first time corporate, cross government benchmarking in this area, using OPD's expertise for data gathering and analysis and tapping into cross sector & international benchmarking data.

The Approach

• OPD has been appointed under the governance of a project board comprising OGC, the Department for Trade and Industry (DTI), the Department for Health (DH), the Home Office (HO), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP);
• Key Performance Indicators will be developed during the pilot phase in consultation with the project board, together with a methodology for collecting the relevant data;
• The findings will be presented in the form of a report including comparative data from UK and international public and private sector organisations for benchmarking and will include recommendations for improvement; and
• If the pilot is successful, the service will be rolled out to all government departments over a further two and half years.
  

Occupiers Property Databank

Many of the techniques and standards proposed for this Project belong to OPD.  The OPD International Total Occupancy Cost Code will help identify efficiency.  OPD will employ techniques, such as Workplace Productivity Appraisal to collect qualitative data for assessing effectiveness. 
 

Media Enquires at OGC to: 020 7271 1366/1318/1381
At OPD:  Paul Hunter on 020 7643 9251; e-mail - paul.hunter@opd.co.uk