Posts Tagged ‘service provider’

Sparring Partners – At The Facilities Show, Birmingham, UK

I had the privilege of speaking at The Facilities Show in May. My seminar is based on a cover article I wrote for Building Operations Management Magazine called ‘Sparring Partners’ (email me for a copy of the article) and focused on the 3 ways we fail to develop a strong partnership with our service providers and what has to change in how we procure services, structure contracts and financial models and manage performance.

After all, it is critical to our success in FM to have service providers who are also successful and the old-school approach that is founded on an adversarial relationship that takes more time and energy than it should to manage, distracting us from strategic and business responsibilities.

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.