How to Get Value from Facility Benchmarking

How to Get Value from
Facility Benchmarking
Robert Lambe, CFM
Managing Principal
Facility Issues

www.FacilityIssues.com
Abstract
Benchmarking is a continuous improvement
practice used by many facilities managers as a
cost effective way to identify potential
opportunities and implement proven practices.
This presentation will describe how facility
managers can get value from each step in the
benchmarking process.
2

Learning Objectives
1. Understand the benchmarking process
2. Explore how to identify opportunities for
improvement from benchmarking
3. Learn how to select appropriate best
practices based on benchmarking
4. Learn that benchmarking is most effective as
part of a continuous improvement program
3

Bench . mark . ing: The search for industry best
practices that lead to superior performance
Benchmarking - What Is It?
4
Comparing measures of the quantity and quality of an organization's facility
space, cost, etc., with similar measurements of its peers to determine:
• What and where improvements are called for,
• How other organizations achieve higher performance levels,
• How to use this information to improve performance.

Pros & Cons of Benchmarking
Pro’s
• Relatively low cost
• Relatively low effort
• Neutral “agenda”
• Comparisons are easy
to understand
• Demonstrated, real
life, applied solutions
Con’s
• Needs reliable data
• Can take time to
realize benefits
• Need to search for
“opportunities”
• Usually not “step-
function” solutions
5

The Benchmarking Process
1. Clarify What You
Wish to Accomplish
2. Gather & Normalize
Your Data
3. Compare with a
Target/Peer Group
4. Identify Apparent
“Best Practices”
5. Select Which
Changes To Try
6. Track Progress
6www.FacilityIssues.com

Start with Clear Objectives
Typical Objectives Include:
• To quantify your situation
(internally)
• To learn how you compare
(vs peer group)
• To identify areas for near term
focus/effort
• To justify proposed initiatives
• To promote change/new thinking
• To network with peers
• To learn from others
7

Thoughts About Your Objectives
8
If you don't know
where you are going,
any road will get you
there.
Tom
Peters
Excellent firms
don't believe in
excellence - only
in constant
improvement
and constant
change.
Lewis
Carroll

Benefit #1 – Having Defined Objectives
9
• Having clear objective(s) helps focus on
completing the process and evaluating how to
get value from the results.
• Since benchmarking is an ongoing activity, the
objective(s) should be re-visited each cycle to
reflect changing needs and priorities.

Assemble / Normalize Data
Most Common Data Types Include:
• Space
• Occupancy
• Occupant Satisfaction
• Operating Costs
• Staffing
• Service Levels
• Related Services
(Mail, Reprographics, etc.)
10

The 80/20 Rule
The largest single value
opportunity of facility
cost benchmarking:
95% of your facility
O&M costs are from
just four primary
categories.
11
Cost by function for a group of 50 Facility Issues
benchmarking participants

Thoughts About Facility Data
12
Aristotle Vin Scully
Statistics are used
much like a drunk
uses a lamppost:
for support, not
illumination.
Knowing
yourself is the
beginning of all
wisdom.

Benefit #2 – Understand Your Situation
13
An impartial honest
questioning of your
own normalized data
will identify potential
opportunities and
generate questions
that lead to
improvements.

Compare to a Peer Group
• Most of the time, benchmarking
is best with a peer group (similar
to your organization).
• If you like stretch goals or your
objective is looking for new
paradigms, participating with a
different group can be useful
(just watch out for invalid
comparisons)
14

How it Works...
Typically Survey forms
are used to collect
consistent data.
Then comparisons are
made among the
participants.
15

Thoughts About Peer Groups
16
I wouldn't want to
belong to any club
that would have me
as a member.
Ellen
DeGeneres
Sometimes you
can't see yourself
clearly until you
see yourself
through the eyes
of others.
Groucho
Marx

Benefit #3 – Peer Group Comparison
17
• The peer group comparison scorecard
identifies how well you are doing compared to
others.
• This is the single most commonly viewed
“result” of benchmarking, and many people
stop here.

Identify How Others Appear
to Perform Better
18
• The real value in benchmarking is
understanding how other organizations
are doing similar jobs for less cost, or
better customer service, or both.
• The search requires discussion to
determine what better performers are
doing to achieve their performance:
– Conference calls
– Meetings
– Presentations
– Site visits & observation

Thoughts About Best Practices
19
Albert
Einstein
Eleanor
Roosevelt
The only source
of knowledge is
experience.--
Aristotle
Learn from the
mistakes of others.
You can’t live long
enough to make
them all yourself.

Benefit # 4 – Identify Alternative Practices
• Best practices identified through
benchmarking have some practical
advantages over other approaches:
– You can see the magnitude of potential benefit
they offer in the results.
– They are proven, by virtue of someone already
having done them.
– You can often identify how widespread a practice
is within the peer group.
20

Select Practices to Apply
Some best practices will be more
applicable to your situation than
others:
• What are your most significant
opportunity areas?
• What practices will you be able
to implement?
• Which offer long-term
sustainable value?
21

Thoughts About Selecting
Practices
22
There are three kinds of
men. The one that learns
by reading. The few who
learn by observation. The
rest of them have to pee
on the electric fence for
themselves.
Thomas
Edison
Opportunity
is missed by
most people
because it is
dressed in
overalls and
looks like work.
Will
Rogers

Benefit # 5 – Apply Changes Intelligently
23
• Your benchmarking program can provide
some improvement initiatives for your
organization to consider.
– You can anticipate the order of magnitude benefit,
time to achieve, and most likely challenges to
overcome based upon the experience of others.
– You may hear some lessons learned about how to
implement them in an organization similar to
yours.

Measure Your Progress and
Continue
Measure the progress achieved to
determine how effective the
changes were:
• The easiest way to measure the
changes is to re-benchmark the
same data set.
• An advantage of an ongoing
benchmarking program is that
each cycle will let you build on
the prior one.
24

Thoughts About Changes
25
Henry Ford
Jeffrey
Gitomer
Change is not a
four letter word…
but often your
reaction to it is!
Failure is simply
the opportunity to
begin again, this
time more
intelligently.

Benefit # 6 – Progress Measurement
26
Ongoing tracking
will quantitatively
document your
progress and the
relative
effectiveness of the
various initiatives.
Everyone in your peer group is
also getting better over time.

Conclusion: Why Benchmark Your Facilities?
• Part of a continuous improvement program
– Document your situation quantitatively
– Measure progress
– Promote mindset of positive change
– Support your competitiveness
• Identify specific opportunity areas and actions
– Cost savings
– Quality improvements
– Learn proven process improvements
27

For more information: https://facilityissues.com/
Robert Lambe
Rlambe@FacilityIssues.com
315-601-6010

How to Get Value from Facility Benchmarking

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