REDUCED COST

In-house services are defacto monopolies with little incentive to improve productivity whereas an IFM company must be competitive in the open marketplace. An IFM company lowers costs in five areas:

	Management costs –	these costs are minimized through TQM and Global Shared Practices
	Labour costs –	these costs are minimized through training and “multi-skilling” to minimize idle time
	Material costs –	global purchasing agreements and leveraging of local relationships ensure that these costs are minimized
	Subcontractor costs –	an IFM company has in-house experts to reduce dependence on subcontractors and has greater local purchasing power than the customers
	Hidden costs –	these include burden costs (administration, payroll, recruiting, training, temporary help, insurance, benefits, etc.) and costs of quality control, safety management,standardization, inventory control and purchasing.

An IFM company is more efficient than its customers are because, unlike its customers, it has a strategic focus of providing building services. Because the provision of facility management is their core business, an IFM company keeps abreast of the latest concepts and technologies to continuously innovate and save cost.

   IMPROVED LEVEL OF SERVICES

Well-maintained and documented facilities preserve their asset value for the customer.

With most in-house facility management organizations, the quality of service depends almost exclusively on the people delivering the service. In contrast, an IFM company emphasizes both people and processes. The highly developed processes of an IFM company leverage the investment in people to deliver an improved level of service. The management processes used by IFM companies minimize cost and consistently deliver to a predictable standard.

By focussing on processes as well as people, an IFM company provides the lowest cost approach to service management and delivery. The transportability of the processes means that the expertise of the IFM company is easily localized without relying on expatriate specialists. Results are process driven and do not depend on the skills of one or two key individuals. Process-driven results are predictable, even in the event of personnel turnover.

For many companies level of service can be measured by equipment availability or up-time. The two performance indicators to be managed are Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). Mean Time to Repair can be further subdivided into response time, stabilization time and restoration time. Management processes that can be used to optimize up-time include:

	Mean Time Between Failure –	The implementation of Reliability-Centered Maintenance will optimize the Mean Time Between Failure.
	Response Time –	The help desk function, planning processes, scheduling processes and the work prioritization system will minimize response time. Another option to    minimize response time is condition based monitoring.
	Stabilization Time –	The access to drawings and other support documentation as well as the standard or emergency procedures will minimize the stabilization time.
	Restoration Time –	Spare parts inventory, subcontractor management system and labour allocation will assist in managing restoration.
	Root Cause Analysis –	A centralized technical support group can do root cause analysis to re-engineer the system.

An IFM company was able to use these techniques to improve the up-time of Ameritech’s data centers from 80% to 94% over three years.

Motivated employees deliver superior results. Unlike an in-house service organization, an IFM company can motivate workers with specialized training opportunities, opportunities for professional advancement and career flexibility. The entire IFM company has a “building service” culture which provides a conducive environment for a facility management professional to excel. IFM companies are the employers of choice in the industry.

A fundamental concept of IFM is that service levels are measured. Such measurements allow for benchmarking. Service levels can be benchmarked:

before and after the involvement of an IFM company
to monitor trends in the performance of an IFM company
to compare multiple buildings in the customer’s portfolio
to compare the building to industry norms (performance measurement database)

Virtually every project experiences an improvement in the quality if service when an IFM company becomes involved. For example, in the IBM facilities in Northeastern USA, the customer satisfaction rating was at 34%. After three years with an IFM company, the customer satisfaction rating has increased to 80%. IBM has been very analytical in the measurement of customer satisfaction as it is linked to the bonus of the IBM facility manager.