Benchmarking is not only for the end-user, but also will help those who have facilities professionals as their clients. This includes service providers, contractors, and outsourcers—each can benefit from benchmarking from benchmarking in a number of ways. Here are the most frequent reasons cited:
- Quite often, contracts require benchmarking of key performance indicators (KPIs) to assure the owner that the services provided are competitive and consistent with industry costs and levels of services.
- Many service providers and outsourcers will benchmark internally to track costs and understand how their various contacts are performing.
- Service providers need access to benchmarking data in developing proposals for new work.
- Benchmarking data can be provided to the client’s procurement group to avoid the need to re-bid work and extend the contract period.
Service providers have the same issues getting started with benchmarking as CREs and FMs. The press of daily issues and problems often takes much time and thus keeps the benchmarking initiative from beginning. But without good benchmarking comparisons, service providers may not realize their cost profile is high or low.
Regardless of which benchmarking program or tool you use, the task can often look formidable. Data may be held by different organizations and, when working for a client, some information regarding space or headcounts may not be readily available. Finally, many benchmarking data entry forms are not user friendly so no one usually volunteers to “benchmark” unless they can see the benefits.
All of these issues easily can be overcome—when they are, the benefits to benchmarking certainly outweigh the negatives. Here is a suggested approach to help you to get started. We have used examples from FM BENCHMARKING to illustrate how easy the process should be. This type of approach will allow you obtain the key reports in minimum time.
First of all, focus on what is important! For service providers, what is important are the services included in your scope of work. Energy management, maintenance and janitorial services are often provided under service contracts, so the KPIs for those services need to be benchmarked. In this article we will discuss the KPIs for energy utilization—the others work the same way. Subsequent articles will cover maintenance and janitorial KPIs for service providers.
In North America energy intensity is compared on a gross square foot basis. Since, for most buildings, the electricity usage is a major component we usually look at electric energy intensity: KWH (Kilo-watt Hours) per Gross Square Foot. If you are someplace other than the North America you would normally look at the same data but in square meters: KWH (Kilo-watt Hours) per Gross Square Meter.
Comparing your energy consumption may give you the wrong perspective on your performance unless the comparisons are made with a relevant peer group. For a quick analysis we can utilize FM BENCHMARKING LITE to create a chart showing the KWH/area of a good peer group. Here, for example, is a chart showing the KWH/area for office facilities (by limiting the data to those from office facilities, we have begun to define our peer group).
This allows you to see at a glance how well your facilities are utilizing electricity compared to other office buildings. There are 318 buildings in this peer group with a median KWH utilization of 24.25 KWH/GSF and a first quartile performance of 16.7 KWH/GSF (the value on the border of the first and second quartiles). By looking at and comparing similar types of facilities, you will be able to make intelligent “data driven” decisions. The service provider for this example has totaled his annual KWH consumption and divided by the GSF to determine the annual usage of 18.94 KWH/GSF, which is in the second quartile. This is an opportunity for the service provider to propose some additional energy conservation projects to the owner that would improve the performance and earn additional fees for the service provider—a win-win for both.
These types of charts present the service provider with an idea of the performance of a good peer group but it doesn’t directly show the client’s building performance (or multiple buildings from one or several clients) or provide a table of the implemented best practices by quartile; best practices enable the service provider to see what better performing buildings are doing different than the clients’ buildings. In this example, to study best practices with FM BENCHMARKING, one needs to graduate from LITE to the full version.
The full version of FM BENCHMARKING shows at a glance how well your facility is utilizing its electrical consumption. Besides using just the Office filter, we note that our building is a large one, so we apply a large building filter as well. There are 171 buildings in this peer group with a median electrical utilization of 23.50 kwh per GSF. Our building’s performance is 18.94 kwh per GSF and the performance needed to reach the first quartile 15.97 kwh per GSF.
To reach first quartile you could start by encouraging the occupants to turn off more lights, reducing the operating hours, raising the temperature set points in the summer and lowering the set points in the winter, and more. However, none of these steps will provide a better work environment for the occupants, you will receive more complaints, and there is no added fee for any of this.
A much better approach would be to evaluate what best practices other organizations in this peer group have implemented to reach the first quartile performance level. The table below shows some of the best practices that have been implemented in your client’s building as well as what have been implemented by the peer group in your quartile and the next better-performing quartile. This is only a partial list from FM BENCHMARKING, there are about 40 best practices overall, but we have simplified it for this article.
Using the results from this table, the service provider can make proven recommendations for energy efficiency projects that would help achieve first quartile performance. Again, this is win-win for both the service provider and the owner. The owner will achieve cost savings from the energy efficiency improvements, the service provider will earn additional fee by implementing projects, and there will be improved occupant satisfaction, which benefits everyone.
