Northern Rail
June 11, 2018
DSTL
June 7, 2018
Oldham School

What was the brief

Thomson FM was commissioned by Keir Facilities Services to carry out an independent 10-year Benchmarking for Oldham Schools; a 27-year Private Finance Initiative to finance, construct, operate, and maintain two new 1,500 place secondary schools. The client is Oldham Metropolitan Borough Council. Benchmarking is a contract requirement as a first step to value test different services with market prices. It is primarily designed to re-align costs to real market value and satisfy end users that costs are reasonable.The brief was to assess the relative cost and quality of the catering, cleaning, caretaking, site security and grounds maintenance services.

What did we do

We met with the project stakeholders, including Oldham Council to agree the benchmarking programme, process and to identify key issues of importance. We reviewed all of the project documentation focusing on the contractual benchmarking process, services specifications and costs. Site visits were undertaken to observe the quality of the delivery of the services in each school. Costs are converted into standard benchmark format, generally £/sqm.We then extracted comparable benchmark data from our own database of benchmark costs and using quartile analysis compared this with the project costs. Quartile analysis takes account of the variation of benchmark data and allows comparison of the data on a meaningful basis.

 The Outcome

The resulting benchmark report provided Kier FM and its client a detailed analysis and conclusion on the benchmark outcomes for each service and in total. Services were either below, comparable to or above the comparison benchmarks. This provided a basis for negotiation, and potentially marker testing of service between Keir and the Council.

 Client feedback

The feedback from all stakeholders was positive, being happy with the report and the methodology used. The Council was satisfied that the benchmarking process had been carried out effectively and could be used as a basis for any adjustments to the service costs.