Posts Tagged ‘procurement’

Do you use the Carrot & Stick approach to managing Outsourced or Subcontracted suppliers? Think Again.

Key Performance Measurements (KPI) Carrot & Stick approach There’s a lot of evidence that the typical Key Performance Indicator (KPI) methods of trying to ensure you get performance from an outsourced or subcontracted service provider don’t work the way you think. In this Video (see below), Daniel Pink, author of “Drive : The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us” presents research that tells you why.

I have personal experience on both sides of the fence on this issue and use KPI’s with extreme care – it’s better to put a measurement and management system in place to get the results you need, not a ‘set it and forget it’ KPI system where you simply measure success or failure after the fact and award a penalty or bonus accordingly.

Posted by Michel Theriault Feb 19, 2011

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Managing Facilities and Real Estate is risky : Are you making it worst?

Risk in Managing Facilities and Real Estate We know that what we do is a risky business.

Now, three men providing services to the Facility & Property Management industry in Canada face charges of criminal negligence causing death because of a tragic workplace accident. The maximum penalty is life in prison.

It’s lucky that the property manager who hired them wasn’t charged – they also have a responsibility for making sure their contractors are qualified and in some jurisdictions, can also be found liable as a result of their contractor’s actions or inactions if they haven’t done their due-diligence.

Are you sure your contractors are following the rules and safeguarding their employees?

Posted by Michel Theriault Dec 16, 2010

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Procuring Facility Management Services isn’t the same as Procuring Paperclips

Procuring Facility Management services is not the same as buying widgets or tendering project work. You will live with the results, and the people who come along with the supplier, for the term of the contract.

This means it is just as important to get the right service and the right company as it is to get the right prices. You can’t use a technical approach to procuring your services like you would with a construction project or a simple price based process you might use to procure your office supplies.

Posted by Michel Theriault Apr 05, 2010

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Procuring FM Services – Are You Asking The Right Questions?

There is a simple mistake many Facility Managers (or their procurement departments) make when writing the Request For Proposal (RFP) questions for FM services. I’ve seen it time and time again, having written my share of proposal responses both for past employers and for some consulting clients, assessed procurement practices, procured FM services and helped FM clients with their evaluation process for their own procurement initiatives. As you can see, I have lots of experience with RFP questions, both good and bad.

They don’t ask the right questions.

Posted by Michel Theriault Apr 04, 2009

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Penalize Your Suppliers!

The search term “penalize your supplier” in a Google search recently led someone to my web site, www.StrategicAdvisor.ca

They landed on our performance measurement article, which certainly has those words in the content, but then they quickly went somewhere else – probably because we don’t talk about penalizing suppliers – we focus on managing supplier performance to get results in a proactive, constructive way.

Posted by Michel Theriault Jul 22, 2008

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