June 3, 2013

Whitehall savings boosted by property and procurement efficiencies

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Public Sector

The joint Cabinet Office and Treasury initiative the Efficiency and Reform Group has exceeded the Government’s savings target by 25 per cent to make an overall saving of £10 billion, Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude announced today. The savings made include; £1.1 billion made by boosting online services and selling empty buildings and exiting expensive rentals in sought-after locations; £1.7 billion by reviewing large scale projects including construction, and stripping out inefficiencies; and a further £3.8 billion was saved in procurement, by linking together departments to buy goods and services.

May 31, 2013

RIBA and CIBSE call for collaboration in CarbonBuzz initiative

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Property, Public Sector, Technology

The CarbonBuzz energy benchmarking initiative, backed jointly by the RIBA and CIBSE gets a new online platform next week. The CarbonBuzz project allows users to record, share and compare the real energy use of building projects and to shed light on the differences between predicted and operational performance. Now RIBA and CIBSE are calling on architects and building services engineers to upload their projects to CarbonBuzz and re-energise the industry’s benchmarking database, which was first launched in 2008. Both institutes have spearheaded the publication of energy data in their annual awards schemes and point out that CarbonBuzz is the best way to demonstrate energy credentials. More →

May 30, 2013

UK public sector leading the way in procurement and sustainable building

by Paul Statham • Comment, Facilities management, Public Sector, Technology

Nottingham City Council’s Loxley Building

Over the last few years, the UK Government has grown increasingly interested in finding ways of making its £30 billion property portfolio more efficient. Both the last Labour government and the current Coalition administration have been driven by the opportunities offered them with the advent of new technology, new ways of working and new procurement models. They’ve pursued these issues to cut costs by reducing and changing the way property is designed and managed but have also found how that can also help to establish best practice in sustainable building. What is increasingly apparent, especially given recent news from the Major Projects Authority about cost savings in procurement is that the public sector is now leading the way as models of good practice.

May 22, 2013

Fearful UK employees benefit from engagement policies finds survey

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Public Sector, Workplace

A new study provides some proof that the employee engagement lobby has some validity. According to a new national survey, job stress has gone up and job-related well-being has gone down since the start of the recession, with Britain’s employees feeling more insecure and pressured at work than at any time in the past 20 years. The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) report the biggest concern was about pay reductions, followed by loss of say over their job. However, the survey found that where employers pursued employee engagement practices, giving employees more involvement in decision making at work, staff were less anxious about their jobs. More →

May 22, 2013

Flexible working going into reverse in parts of UK public sector

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, Public Sector, Technology, Workplace

A briefing from the Society of IT Management claims that while nearly all UK public sector organisations have adopted some form of flexible working, the practice remains far from universal and is going into reverse in some departments. The report found that around 97 percent of UK public sector organisations have now adopted the practice in the form of home working, desk sharing and mobile working in four of the public sector functions surveyed. While while there have been large increases in adoption the adoption of flexible working in the revenues and benefits functions and some in education, four other services show a significant decline with others appearing to be static.

May 21, 2013

Worldwide competition launched by RIBA to design a new Scotland Yard

by Sara Bean • Architecture, News, Property, Public Sector, Workplace design

Courtesy of Simon Heath

A worldwide competition to design a new Metropolitan Police HQ has been launched by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The force is moving from its landmark New Scotland Yard site in Westminster, central London as part of cost cutting measures. The project on behalf of the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) and Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) will involve the redevelopment of the existing and currently unoccupied Curtis Green MPS building located on the Victoria Embankment, London, SW1. Roger Harding MPS – Director of Real Estate Development said: “The opportunity to create a modern efficient working environment for the Met’s future headquarters, with world-class architecture that provides value for money and is alive to the history of the building provides a wonderful challenge.” More →

May 3, 2013

BIM provides opportunities for the built environment finds report

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Public Sector

Building Information Modelling (BIM) will raise productivity, provide better buildings, faster and cheaper and represents opportunities for the built environment to become a powerful international player. This is according to a major new report, Growth through BIM produced by Richard Saxon, the UK Government’s BIM Ambassador for Growth who concludes: “No wonder it has been mandated as government policy“. The Built Environment sector, for the purposes of his report, is defined as Property, Construction and Facilities Management, which accounts for about 15 per cent of GDP, and which he describes as: “an enabling sector, facilitating the performance of most other sectors”. More →

April 30, 2013

Report urges EU and members states to use design for public good

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Public Sector, Workplace design

Design is no longer just an add-on, but has evolved into a fully joined-up innovation methodology and with countries around the world adopting this thinking the European Union cannot afford to be left behind. This is the message of Design Council and other members of SEE (Sharing Experience Europe) in a report published today, Design for Public Good, which encourages the European Union and its member states to adopt design-led innovation to create the next generation of public services and policy that can meet the pressing demands of the future.

April 22, 2013

NHS Estate inefficiencies present ‘Hyde Park sized opportunity’, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Property, Public Sector

Consultants E C Harris have just published the latest edition of their report into the NHS Estate which claims that the service has an opportunity to save around £2.3 billion a year in the way it manages and procures space. Every report needs headlines to go with and in this case E C Harris have plumped for the idea that the NHS is underutilising space equivalent to an area the size of Hyde Park and that an eighth of the estate is unsuitable for its intended use, equivalent to ‘three Hyde Parks’. Last year’s edition of the report claimed the potential saving of disposable space was the equivalent of ‘264 Premier League football pitches’, which at least has the advantage of being comprehensible for those who can’t envisage how big Hyde Park is.

April 17, 2013

Government approach to efficiency yields savings, but is it sustainable?

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector

A new report from the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO)has praised the work of the Efficiency & Reform Group (ERG), part of the Cabinet Office in delivering over £5 billion of savings in central government but has challenged the ERG to make them sustainable over the longer term to meet the Government’s target of making annual savings of £20 billion by 2015. The NAO report welcomes the achievements of the ERG so far but expresses its concerns that many of the savings had been achieved with quick wins related to the renegotiation of existing contracts, staff cuts and the cancellation of marketing budgets, which had already begun to tail off.

April 16, 2013

UK employers gain confidence to start recruitment of new staff

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Public Sector, Workplace

UK businesses are slowly gaining confidence in hiring new staff this year and the majority of employers (79 per cent) don’t plan any job losses. This is according to the Barclays Job Creation Survey 2013 which found that while the proportion of larger employers that plan to create jobs this year has fallen to 65 per cent from 72 per cent in 2012, mid-sized businesses hiring intentions are up to 71 per cent from 65 per cent. The majority of those employers who do intend to hire remain cautious however, with 73 per cent planning to have sales growth lead to job creation as opposed to job creation creating sales (2012: 77 per cent).

April 8, 2013

Public sector property initiatives have proved successful but work still needed

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Public Sector, Workplace design

There was a time, not so long ago, when nobody worried too much about the shape of the rooms that led off the corridors of power. But the pressure on UK finances has politicised the design of the UK’s public buildings. The latest example of this was the recent announcement in Parliament of a report that, amongst other things, called for a new approach in the way facilities are designed to deliver better services in a more cost effective way. The report Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services was the result of an eight-month investigation led by the Design Commission along with politicians, designers and civil servants.