Got Questions – Get Answers

If you’re just plain fed-up with poor Cleaning performance, dirty buildings and over-the-top complaints, something has to change. And, outsourcing is the bets strategy for your success. You’ll improve quality, reduce complaints, get better control and you’ll do all this at a lower cost! All this will save jobs and make the company more competitive in the market place. Either way, outsourcing can get you control and support Company goals. A cleaner building, with no complaints and below market pricing is a payoff that benefits everyone. In short, outsourcing should make you look good, improve Company competitiveness and simplify your job.

Outsourcing creates the opportunity to change the rules and focus on results- measured results. The old saying is true, you’ve got to define, measure, manage and improve to achieve real results. And, measurement of performance is defined by your outsourcing documents, before the contract is awarded. You can’t manage what you don’t measure!

This is a question we hear a lot. A few Companies have never had a problem and some have given up trying to find a capable Contractor. “They’re all alike’, is a common opinion. We have had successful experiences with Contractors of all sizes and levels of sophistication. There are excellent local, regional and national Contractor companies out there. But not on the same day and not every day. Good Companies that are growing can stretch their staff and systems resources. Thus, during a period of substantial growth, a Contractor might be a poor performer. Alternatively, a Contractor who just lost business can devote experienced resources to your project and could be a very good choice. Knowing the Contractor industry and talking to them regularly allows you to know who the good Contractors are today.

This is done more than some Companies care to say. Yet, using someone else’s contract is frought with risks. There seems to be an assumption that what worked for the other Company must work for us. Yet, you have different customers, with different personalities and expectations. You have different facilities, with unique surfaces and cleaning needs. You have different contractor managers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. And finally, your Company’s strategic goals could be dramatically different from the other Company. For these reasons, using someone else’s contract leads to disappointment, or worse, most of the time.

Performance-based contracting has grown substantially over the last few years, and for some very good reasons. Recognize, first of all, that “performance” can be defined in many ways and each has its own merits. We believe that effective performance should be defined by the results that make you sucessful with your customer. Thus, the Contractor can only succeed when you succeed. Customers tend to judge cleaning by the hard evidence of failure. And in this sense, performance contracting is all about buying results. Traditional contracting tells the Contractor how to do their job by specifying the cleaning process. This Task/frequency strategy pays contractors to implement the activities you specify. By contrast, performance contracting pays the contractors to satisfy your customers and deliver results.

Yes! There are situations under which a task-frequency specification is your best option. Not the least of which is your own comfort level. And, we all know that there is a real connection between task, frequency of occurrence and the resulting performance. When you want better quality, you increase the frequency of some task (process), right? Everybody knows this, I think? Yet, there is a difference between knowledge and understanding. Knowing how to do this is easy; just kick the computer hard enough and it will spit out a set of frequencies (there are actually a few good programs out there). Knowing when and why to use certain tasks and frequencies requires an understanding of how these activities will make you successful in support of company strategic goals. Nonetheless, keep in mind that what you are buying is results and tasks are just someone’s idea of how to get there.

Yes, you could implement outsourcing yourself; lots of Companies do. Yet, there are some distinct advantages available from third party help. You’ll save time, you’ll benefit from a best practice refined by hundreds of other companies, you will conserve your staff resources, you will acquire new skills, you’ll gain a better understanding of the Contractor market, your savings and performance benefits are predictable and assured. All-in-all you will realize great value from using a third party resource.

Elliott has done more Performance-based contracts than anyone—over 530 so far! We have critiqued just about every type of contract there is and produced some of the most innovative partnerships in the industry. We offer nearly forty years of creative contracting in virtually every type of facility, including colleges and universities, municipalities, airports, corporate headquarters, banks, manufacturing plants, commercial offices, public utilities and more. Our services and systems are utilized in over 500,000,000 sq. ft. of space throughout the United States, with performance measurement each month in a portfolio of over 10,000 locations. Our experience includes outsourcing and consolidating facility portfolios of up to 31,000,000 sq. ft., in 6000 buildings, with client savings in the range of 15-to-40%.

It’s often said that after taxes and energy, cleaning costs are probably the highest expense you must control in building management. As a result, cleaning costs are an obvious target for top management scrutiny and one that is most often challenged. Performance measurement helps you communicate the strategic value of the cleaning effort. Second, Cleaning (or lack of it) often generates more occupant complaints than any other area of responsibility. Without objective information, your contractor’s performance and your reputation are communicated more by complaints than facts. Yet, perhaps the most important benefit of reliable measurement is the opportunity for fact-based management. If the service process is not delivering the results required by the performance contract, everyone looses. Better management means you can constantly change and improve tasks, processes and systems that are not taking care of the customer. You can not hold contractors accountable for customer care if there is no reliable measurement of performance. The performance measurement approach to better management is focused on measuring contract compliance and measuring constant improvement of everyone’s systems and processes to prevent problems, instead of always responding to them.

There are all kinds of performance measurement and inspection systems. For some, occupant complaints are all the measurement system they need. Others say the “no news is good news; if you don’t hear from them, things are fine”. Some people look at floors; some smell the rest rooms; and, others look in the corners and under the sink. A few people think that all you need is experience in doing a task, to have good performance measurement skills. Yet, the evolution of quality control thinking in both manufacturing and services has broadened our understanding about what a good measurement system looks like. With the introduction of quality-based thinking and the development of effective quality management models, quality measurement has become more scientific by focusing on cleaning attributes, versus a rating scale or the experience of the “inspector”. The difference between companies that use these systems and those who don’t is dramatic in terms of business success and profitability. A measurement and inspection system that is not based on these principals is a product of yesterdays thinking.

There are three overall values to inspection information. First, inspection information verifies delivered performance. It answers the fundamental question: “Are we getting the performance we are paying for?” This type of information reports cleanliness quality and customer satisfaction performance across all portfolio boundaries. There should be drill-down capability for performance information about quality measures (the results of the service delivery system against the requirements of the contract). Second, inspection information should support and facilitate changes in the cleaning system. It answers the question: “How do we get better?” Getting better is really a focus on the principals inherent in the thinking of Dr. W. Edward Deming, Joesph Juran, Phil Crosby, A. C. Rosander and others. The information provided should clarify common vs. special cause problems through root cause analysis techniques. The information provided should assist the contractor in prioritizing their activities toward not only fixing the problems, but fixing the system to prevent reoccurrence of the problem. Third, inspection information allows for accurate payment of the contractor invoice, including any incentive (or deduction) in a performance contract. It answers the question: “How much should we pay the contractor?” Paying the contractor can mean simply as cutting a check for the invoiced amount; or, it can mean actually tying contractor payment to contractor performance. In the latter case, contract requirements are developed into key performance indicators (KPI’s) and measured against contractor delivered results.

Self inspection is a natural option. Managers know when customers are unhappy or when there are service problems. They are on-site every day and can quickly respond to customers and direct the resources of the contractor. Yet, self measurement can suffer from insufficient time availability, technical measurement skills, inconsistent or unreliable data, measurement bias toward company costs savings and multi-tasking distraction. With a careful investment of time, people, training and money, these risks can be minimized. Even with such an investment, buyer measurement is often a measure-by-exception process that focuses on problem solving and occasional reality checks. For the most part, that’s about all the time the manager has to devote to the measurement effort. Further, this misses the point that the real value of performance measurement is to achieve company strategic goals for increased quality, cost reduction and contractor process improvement, all with the goal of advancing the company’s competitive position.

Many building managers believe that the more operational experience an inspector has, the better the information produced. Yet, experience itself does not automatically assure the best, most accurate judgment about performance. Even years of experience can produce an unintended bias in judgment about performance: First the experience may reflect years of the wrong kind of experience; second, the inspection reflects the personality of the inspector (who may or may not be the best fit – too much or too little ego); third, each inspector carries a subjective bias drawn from their past roles and responsibilities about what is really important; fourth; many really experienced managers can be inconsistent in what, and how many, items they look at to judge performance on a day to day basis; fifth, because a manager understands the difficulty of doing some aspects of the work, they may tend to overlook some problems; and finally, most workers are not trained inspectors, but are given that job because of other experience.
In short, in-depth operational experience may carry its own baggage and limitations including: wrong kind of experience; wrong personality type; subjective view of priorities; inconsistent inspection; overlook difficult tasks and not trained as an inspector. Not everyone makes a good inspector, no matter how much experience they have.

There are important reasons to be concerned about the science of measurement:

1. The stakes are high-You are measuring a career-breaker.
2. The cost of services is a big part of the Building’s budget and you’ve got to justify you budget.
3. Accuracy, Consistency and Objectivity of information is vital for better managers.
4. Best Practice means just that1 Effective measurement is a proven strategy to performance success.
5. Manufacturing and Service industry Quality gurus have already shown the way to accurate, objective, consistent performance measurement.

In short, you will have a performance measurement system that will bring recognition to you as an effective and informed manager and your company as an industry leader.

It would be a wrong to say that contractors like any inspection system. At the end of the day, no one really likes final exams, dental check-ups, or performance inspections. The central question has less to do with liking an inspection program than everyone feeling that all parties are treated fairly by it. At its root, the more important issues are to insure that: the contractor is inspected fairly, within the framework of the contract; the contractor can manage better because of the information provided by the measurement system; there is an appeal process to a perceived unfair inspection rating; the contractor can participate in the inspection itself; the inspection system does not unfairly require contractor to provide services outside the scope of the contract; and the contractor gets training and support in operations and process improvement.

Companies chose Elliott because we have confronted and managed the issues facing both our clients and their contractors. Companies chose Elliott because we are their Advocate, on their side, standing by them in managing the complexities of the cleaning system. We custom design measurement programs that reflect client priorities for quality, customer satisfaction and financial benefits. We meet client expectations for accurate, objective and consistent measurement, with a commitment to provide information that supports contractor process improvement, customer satisfaction and financial goals. Companies chose Elliott because of our experience in buildings and portfolios of nearly every description. Our clients have included fortune 100 and 500 companies of all sizes and industries. We have served facilities from 30,000 Sf to 50,000,000 Sf; from a single building to 6,000 buildings; from $100,000 annual budgets to $31,000,000 annual budgets; from health care facilities to power plants to office buildings and more. Whatever the industry, whatever the challenge, Elliott has the experience to design a customized program around your goals. Whatever your performance measurement needs, Elliott can design the most effective and cost efficient inspection process to assure the best balance of contract data integrity and building data reliability!