Property Performance Measurement

Measuring efficiency and effectiveness of property and facilities management is a critical component of the High Performing Property programme and provides opportunities for increased efficiency and delivery of savings.  Additionally, measuring efficiency and effectiveness allows organisations to benchmark property against industry best practice informing strategic decisions about buildings and their impact on delivery.

Benchmarking the Civil Estate

A key element of the Government's ambitious and wide-ranging programme to transform asset management in central government is the need for departments to have information that is accurate, complete and readily accessible. OGC has put in place the methodology for benchmarking the performance of buildings across the central government estate. Benchmarking is a powerful tool that, when applied properly, provides an organisation with invaluable insights to support the achievement of their objectives.

The methodology allows for the measurement of both efficiency and effectiveness performance against appropriate key performance indicators and their data requirements. It provides:

• a standardised framework to enable departments to measure and manage their own estate performance,
• a consistent, cross-departmental database, which allows performance to be tracked over time and to be compared with equivalent buildings in the IPD Occupiers Dataset; and
• bespoke reports to participating departments providing both overall results and detailed efficiency and effectiveness analysis for each individual building.

The effectiveness analysis incorporates essential underpinning data to deliver some of the key environmental sustainability targets on the Government Estate, as part of meeting the Government's sustainable development commitments.

Many of the techniques and standards used have been developed by OGC's industry partner, IPD Occupiers. In particular the IPD  International Total Occupancy Cost Code  to help identify efficiency together with techniques, such as Workplace Productivity Appraisal, to collect qualitative data for assessing effectiveness.

OGC Property Benchmarking Service

Since 2006 OGC has been rolling out the methodology as a Property Benchmarking Service to central government departments.  At the end of 2007 648 Government buildings, had been benchmarked, covering 48 departments and sponsored bodies and nearly 150,000 staff. This is a good sample of the Government estate and has allowed the benchmarking model and methodology to be tested, and for benefits to start to be realised.

It has been agreed that the time is now right to ensure the Property Benchmarking Service is used by all central Government organisations as the consistent method for measuring estate performance on a building-by-building basis. Arrangements are being put in place to implement this from 1st April 2008.

For further details on the Property Benchmarking Service please see  the Better Measurement, Better Management (PDF, 484KB) document.

OGC will commission annual reports on the outcome of the Property Benchmarking Service, the implications of the findings and a commentary on what this means for the Government's Civil Estate. The report for 2007 will be available prior to the end of the 2007/08 fiscal year.
 
OGC Property Benchmarking 2006 Report (PDF, 2.77MB)

For further information on the development of the methodology and the initial pilot project please see

OGC Property Benchmarking Project Pilot Report (PDF, 580KB)

OGC Pilot Report Appendices (PDF, 317KB)

Property Benchmarking Service Guidance (PDF, 1180KB).  

For more information please contact:

Richard Graham
Project Sponsor
Office of Government Commerce
Tel: 020 7271 2713
email:  richard.graham@ogc.gsi.gov.uk

David Pike
IPD Occupiers, Project Manager
Tel:  020 7336 9200
email:  david.pike@ipdglobal.com