Office space is an expensive commodity. Along with salaries, occupancy costs are typically one of the largest outgoings for many organisations.

Meeting and conference rooms, equipped with state-of-the art technology and expensive office furniture, are costly resources, yet a large majority of businesses do not possess a clear understanding of how their shared space is being utilised.

Whilst most businesses occupy more space than they need for the size of their workforce, the typical office continues to encounter day-to-day issues of double booked meeting and conference rooms.

Article taken from the June/July 2010 issue of Facility Perspectives. 

To read the full article, please click here.

As featured in FM World, 22nd April 2010.

When it comes to cutting costs across the workplace, room booking is often overlooked but, as Guy Moody discovers, trends in meeting room management are rapidly changing as businesses attempt to drive down costs.

The article includes a case study of BNY Mellon:

Recently voted the Safest Bank in the US BNY Mellon is a global financial services company employing approximately 8,000 staff within the UK and Ireland alone.

BNY Mellon recently relocated their UK headquarters to Queen Victoria Street in Blackfriars, London. The building contains a significant number of meeting and conference rooms and it is the responsibility of BNY Mellon’s facilities department to ensure that the rooms are used to their full potential. According to facilities manager Chris King, “All meeting rooms had previously been booked via our facilities helpdesk which was a considerable administrative load. We wanted to ensure that the new building was run as efficiently as possible, and we needed a system that was flexible enough to cope with our demands.”

Each room had to be assigned a “permission level” to ensure that it could only be booked by the appropriate level of employee. In addition, BNY Mellon wanted to impose departmental and geographic restrictions to certain facilities.

BNY Mellon implemented Service Works’ QFM Room Bookings, in parallel with a major upgrade of their existing QFM system. A move to the web-based application made the system securely accessible to all European staff, irrespective of their location. Meeting rooms have been configured to conform to one of four differing permission levels, enabling BNY Mellon to flexibly restrict which staff can book shared meeting resources. Configurable layouts can be defined in the system, for example, BNY Mellon’s board room has nine possible layouts. The system also allows for custom reports specific to their business to manage cross charging for catering and other services relating to room bookings.

To read the full article, please click here.

Cardiff University, one of Britain’s major teaching and research universities, has selected Service Works Group as its Estates Management software partner.  Service Works’ flagship software, QFM, will be used by the University’s Estates Division to manage reactive and planned maintenance across a geographically diverse estate.

Cardiff University has over 27,000 students and employs around 6,000 staff, making it one of the largest employers in Cardiff. 

The University’s Estates division is responsible for the management and condition of the University’s estate, with over 400,000 sqm floor area in and around Cardiff City centre.

Jim Atkinson, Estates Manager for Cardiff University explains:
“The Estates Division is committed to delivering optimum services to support the University and its community, both now and in the future.  As we continue to serve and meet the needs of our customers, we made the conscious decision to implement a modern, web-based system that could support us in managing maintenance activity, offer comprehensive reporting functions and support the effective resourcing of in-house staff and external contractors.”

Following an extensive 9 month evaluation process, QFM was selected to replace an existing legacy system which had been in place for over 10 years.   Jim Atkinson explains:

“Service Works effectively demonstrated a working system that met our demands and could deliver the functionality and benefits that are important to the University.  QFM will allow building users to input maintenance requests directly into the system via a web-based “self service” interface, reducing the load on the Estates department.”  The University will also be implementing QFM Mobile, allowing them to transfer jobs electronically to engineers via PDA devices.

Once live, QFM will ensure that the Estates Department have a real-time view of all maintenance activity across the whole of the University’s estate, allowing them to manage maintenance requests, ensure that jobs are effectively resourced and improve the efficiency of their workforce.

Service Works will be showcasing the latest version of their web-based CAFM solution, QFM, at the Facilities Show at Birmingham NEC from 11th – 13th May 2010.

Many of the world’s leading organisations have standardised on QFM to improve facilities efficiency, rationalise processes and promote sustainability, resulting in operational costs savings of up to 15%.
An accredited Microsoft Gold Partner, Service Works has developed QFM using the latest .NET technology.  A fully modular suite of applications are available, with functionality including helpdesk management, planned maintenance, health and safety and resource scheduling.  

QFM empowers facilities staff and building users to log, manage and oversee facilities, property and operational activities, from any location, 24/7, delivering measurable improvements in customer service and providing enterprise wide visibility of critical performance information.

QFM supports sustainability strategies by improving the reliability of equipment and extending the life and energy efficiency of assets. The system assists in maintaining compliance and a complete audit trail for health, safety and statutory requirements.

Service Works’ team will be available on stand E65 to demonstrate how QFM technology can be leveraged to streamline facilities and estates operations and generate significant savings in FM expenditure.

For more information or to book a demonstration at the event, please make an enquiry. Alternatively please e-mail info@swg.com or telephone 020 8877 4080

Leighton Contractors has selected Service Works Global’s QFM software application to manage the reactive and planned maintenance tasks and asset management for the Aspire Schools project in South East Queensland.

Aspire Schools, owned by Leighton Contractors and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, was selected in 2009 to design, build and maintain seven new schools in the rapidly-growing South East Queensland Corridor. It has recently completed construction and opened two of the seven schools.

 “We chose QFM because of Service Works’ extensive experience in the global PPP/PFI market,” says John Hesketh, General Manager for Leighton Contractors’ Facility Management Division.

“We work in long term partnerships with providers such as Service Works to deliver complete project services to Public Private Partnership (PPP) and non-PPP clients across Australia and New Zealand. Partnerships such as these help us to deliver ‘whole of life’ value for our clients,” comments John.

“QFM software is an important part of our offering in the South East Queensland Schools PPP Project because it provides comprehensive real-time performance monitoring and management and transparency on service delivery to the project stakeholders. In addition, QFM software incorporates a complex performance calculation tool,” he says.

“By computerising the maintenance schedule and managing the works activities, the system is able to monitor our delivery so we can demonstrate that we are meeting the high level of service standards expected over the project’s 30 year management term.”

For further information, visit:
Leighton Contractors at www.leightoncontractors.com.au
Leighton Investment & Facility Management at www.investmentfacilitymanagement.com.au
Aspire Schools at  http://www.leightoncontractors.com.au/verve/_resources/Data_card_Aspire_Schools_Data_Sheet.pdf