Mighty performance management for FM and PPP
As a leading UK integrated facilities management service provider, Mitie strives to help its clients succeed and grow by providing them with excellent work environments. Mitie’s culture is built on delivering ‘the exceptional every day’, a commitment to put its clients’ needs first, focusing on data utilisation to make the right decision.
Mitie’s PFI division is responsible for 32 healthcare centres and schools across the UK, all operating under public-private partnership (PPP) contracts. The company manages a variety of services across these facilities, including asset management, maintenance, security, energy, cleaning, and utilities.
High-priority sectors such as these, where even small failures have a big impact, demand a responsive FM team supported by a powerful system. Legacy FM software was previously used to manage all deadlines and performance, but it became clear that more specialised software was required.
Choosing a software partner
Lee Clarke joined Mitie in 2008 as System Support Analyst (PPP), and with his team began searching for a new computer aided facilities management (CAFM) system. After investigating the market, the team found that the majority of systems were not able to handle the intricacies of PPP contracts.
Clarke explains: “A big selling point to us for Service Works Global’s QFM software was its ability to handle different sets of core hours of different sites and contracts. We were able to specify the exact terms for each room in each building to ensure we could report fully on our performance. Other systems were simply not capable of doing this.”
Mitie was also impressed by SWG’s knowledge of PPPs, which made it easy for QFM to be set up exactly as required. Clarke continues: “The team were extremely knowledgeable about how the contracts work and how complicated they can be. We found it easy to have a conversation with SWG – they understood what we needed and delivered solutions that worked.”
Accommodating the intricacies
The challenge for Mitie in managing multiple PPP projects is maintaining service quality to at least the agreed standard. The number of KPIs for the FM team varies between each contract, from around 200, where only soft services like cleaning and porterage are required, to a thousand or more where a wider range of services are supplied.
Many of the KPI service levels are associated with the facility opening hours, which means the software not only needs to manage and allocate the jobs but also intelligently calculate when they are due. For example, the main areas of a 24-hour healthcare centre could trigger a failure or deduction for an inadequate response time, but within the premises there might be offices or administration areas which are only open during standard business hours. A school may have a swimming pool with year-round public access, classrooms accessible during term time only, offices in use during school holidays but not bank holidays; Mitie require SWG’s QFM to know all of this.
“One of our colleges is contracted to be open on ten Saturdays per year. I added this information to QFM and uploaded the term calendar and it works out the rest. It calculates which day a task will become due, when it will fail, and it will know to skip the days the college is closed. Most of our SLAs work in hours and minutes, but some of them work by session – for example, if a job is logged at any time during a session, it will be due before the start of the next session.”
“There are a lot of intricacies that QFM can accommodate, whether it’s contractual or just something that the client prefers. It’s great for us to be able to meet these requests so we can minimise the amount of change and disruption for them.” Clarke adds, “Having QFM means it really doesn’t matter how complex the PPP contract is, we can meet the challenge.”
Automated contract calculations
Transparency and communication are the foundation of any partnership, and QFM is integral to this. Its integrated payment mechanism performs all deduction calculations, based on contract parameters, within minutes. Figures are fully auditable and can be accessed by all parties to ensure complete transparency and to strengthen partner relationships.
SWG recently worked with the Mitie systems team to implement QFM’s integrated payment mechanism on one of Mitie’s PPP contracts, with outstanding results. The team at SWG reviewed the contract documents and liaised with Mitie to create a clear understanding of the project and the scope of the payment mechanism (paymech). This document was then signed off by the education client, before each contract term was built into the paymech within QFM.
Clarke recalls: “Enabling the client to see exactly how we will be working, and what factors will be taken into consideration, promotes more trust between us. They understand how deductions are calculated and, as a result, query less of the figures.”
Under Mitie’s previous legacy system, calculations had to be performed on spreadsheets. This was a timeconsuming process that was also prone to error, with much time dedicated to technical checking and fixing. “Our commercial team were spending time looking into the spreadsheet formulae instead of just being able to just check the accuracy of deductions,” says Clarke. “With QFM, it’s just a matter of specifying a few parameters and clicking the generate button. It’s so easy.”
Intuitive, managed work
Mitie has over 60 facilities managers and over 20 contract managers working on facilities up and down the UK, managed by one centralised help desk. All reactive requests are captured on QFM, which tracks and prioritises the work. To ensure requests are added as quickly and accurately as possible, QFM asks a series of questions which can be customised with drop down lists and automatically populated fields. This means there is less pressure on the help desk operative, because information such as which contractors have which skills, or what KPI is attached to a particular service type, is readily available in the system. QFM then notifies the contractor of the work.
QFM’s traffic light system allows the help desk to easily see any jobs any jobs that are approaching their deadline and need to be followed up, which helps the team keep on track. Deadlines can be as short as five minutes for the most critical assets or services, so it’s imperative that the work management process is efficient and accurate to ensure all jobs are responded to on time.
QFM generates on average 10,500 planned preventative maintenance (PPM) jobs per month, which are all automatically scheduled and allocated to operatives. Unlimited schedules can be set up for each asset, with the ability to define the work duration and priority level to allow automatic suppression of lower-priority tasks in the event of a clash. Colour-coded graphics on the system calendar highlight any weeks where PPM requirements exceed the team capacity, ensuring maintenance schedules are achievable. PPM jobs are seamlessly combined with the 9,500 reactive tasks per month, all of which can be tracked through QFM’s help desk.
“It works perfectly for us, helping us improve our asset performance to deliver a more reliable service to our clients,” says Clarke. “Also, it’s very easy to use –the system is intuitive, so you can understand what to do just by looking at the screen. It comes as second nature to our teams. It’s very simple.”
Data for decision making
“The reporting side of QFM is phenomenal,” affirms Clarke. “We can access anything we need, and it’s easy for our FMs to do it themselves without contacting the help desk.”
Mitie combines QFM’s 250+ comprehensive report templates with customisable list reports and SAP® Crystal Reports. While Crystal reports produce large sets of data with drill down reports and summaries, for simpler reporting, QFM list reports can be quickly and easily built directly on screen by choosing columns and adding filters and timescales.
Clarke continues: “We work under very tight time constraints, so any time we can claw back during the day is beneficial. Our FM teams previously had to request reports from the busy help desk, but now they can log in to QFM from any browser and run their own in no time at all.”
Data across the contracts is kept secure as different user classes or access levels can be created to accommodate the different requirements of jobs such as IT administrators, contract managers, facilities managers, janitors or teachers. Each contract’s public sector partner can also access the system. This could be set to read only, for example, but allow them to view a set of reports for all sites within the contract. This access takes a great deal of pressure off the help desk as users can check on the system themselves for work, updates and reports.
Room bookings
In addition to traditional hard and soft services, Mitie provides a bookings system for its contract of six Scottish primary and secondary schools. Classrooms and meeting room availability is managed through QFM Bookings to help ensure space is used more efficiently, eliminating any disruptive double bookings. Users can access the QFM system themselves, bypassing the help desk or school receptionist, to see which rooms are free, book single or recurring meeting, specify room layout or request services like catering or equipment, such as a smartboard. A calendar layout makes it easy to check availability, and a selection of filters, such as location and size, make searching for rooms fast and efficient.
Future focus
Mitie’s next big focus for their CAFM software is to roll out the QFM app to engineers’ mobiles. This will
enable the service provider to improve job resolution times by accurately capturing job closures in real-time, rather than having to contact a help desk operative. Completion can be confirmed by capturing a client signature, and service can be evaluated using a star system to help drive performance.
QFM’s Dynamic Forms are ideal for use on a mobile device, as they can be used to ensure engineer
safety or competency. For example, a working at height risk assessment must be signed before work can
commence, or a check list of required steps can be completed during a job before sign off. Forms are then attached to the job in QFM to provide complete auditability.
“Our experience with Service Works Global has been a positive one right from the start, and any issues we’ve had have been resolved quickly by the support team. We’re very happy with QFM,” concludes Clarke.
