Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 11th April 2024 Issue no. 1109

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IFMA Foundation releases free how-to guide: 'Benchmarking for Facility Professionals

The International Facility Management Association Foundation is offering a free how-to guide designed to assist facilities management professionals in making informed decisions on benchmarking and achieving benchmarking goals. The paper, entitled 'Benchmarking for Facility Professionals', was written by Peter Kimmel (pictured), an IFMA Fellow and the principal of FM Benchmarking, is sponsored by ISS and was reviewed and edited by a team of subject matter experts.

"With the help of organisations like IFMA and the IFMA Foundation, FM professionals are turning to colleagues for guidance more than ever before," says IFMA Foundation Executive Director Jeffrey J. Tafel, CAE. "Benchmarking is one of the most valuable ways that individual FM professionals can benefit from the broad experience and expertise of the larger discipline. The IFMA Foundation is pleased to offer this useful guide for the advancement of the profession free of charge. We have no doubt that readers will appreciate Peter Kimmel's insights and guidance, and we thank him for his ongoing contributions."

Benchmarking has become a valuable tool for many FM professionals seeking data-driven guidance. With the increasing amount of data available to modern facility management professionals, benchmarking can provide new insights that were previously out of reach.

With the help of this free how-to guide from the IFMA Foundation, FM professionals will gain a stronger understanding of what benchmarking is, how it works and how to best utilise it for their specific needs. Included are discussions of multiple approaches to benchmarking to suit varied objectives. The guide differentiates between how facilities managers may apply benchmarking differently from corporate real estate executives and shows how benchmarking can be implemented in manageable phases. For those that wish to take benchmarking to a new level, the guide illustrates how to identify which best practices will be most effective for different types of facilities and how this can result in benefits such as reduced operating costs.

"Benchmarking has been a major interest area of FMs for many years," says Peter Kimmel. "While the concept is familiar to most facilities professionals (loosely, 'a way to compare one's metrics to those of others'), the details of what comprises benchmarking have held different meanings by FMs - and all meanings are correct. This guide sheds some light on and provides structure to those perspectives.

"The objective in writing the guide was to find a way to encompass the different ways one can benchmark, show which work best for which types of objectives, and then go into detail on how to implement a benchmarking solution for one's organisation. When applied properly, benchmarking not only will show a facility professional how well a building is doing compared to others, but also how to improve that building's performance, including reducing operating costs. In today's economy, cost reduction is more important than it has ever been."

This report was made possible by the generous support of ISS (www.issworld.com): "ISS is delighted to sponsor this how-to guide in response to a groundswell of real pressure and momentum for benchmarking solutions in the industry," says Peter Ankerstjerne, ISS Global Marketing Director. "The potential value of benchmarking to clients and outsourcing providers means that it's critical to develop effective solutions now."

The guide is available to download for free from the Foundation's website at: www.ifmafoundation.org

27th February 2014