July 25, 2018
RICS and IFMA launch Procurement of Facilities Management statement to address “race to the bottom”
The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has today launched its first professional statement to ‘reduce risk, increase transparency and further trust’ in procurement in facilities management. The RICS Procurement of facility management, RICS professional statement, UK 1st edition, was worked on in collaboration with IMFA, and also the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS). RICS says it will be looking to make this a global professional statement in due course. All RICS regulated professionals (mandatory from the 1 October 2018) will be expected to follow this guidance, but according to RICS, adoption of the framework would be competitively beneficial for all property professionals involved in the procurement of FM services, including those acting for landlords and occupiers, FM suppliers procuring services from sub-contractors and investors and public and private occupier organisations.












Organisations with a strong people analytics culture are much more likely to report strong business performance claims new global research from the CIPD in association with Workday. However, the survey also highlights that the wide scale adoption of people analytics practice is still low and that more needs to be done to improve skills and confidence in the HR function, particularly in the UK which is lagging behind other markets in both capability and confidence. The research also highlights the importance of access to data. It found that access to people data improves outcomes but only 71 percent of HR professionals have access to this data, and just 42 percent of finance professionals do. For those with access to people data, just 22 percent use it daily in their decision-making and almost a quarter (23 percent) use it in decision-making just once a month or less. The research, People Analytics: driving business performance with people data, surveyed 3,852 business professionals globally – including HR and finance professionals – to understand attitudes towards people analytics and how it is being used in organisations.







Take up of commercial office leases in London’s West End had its strongest start to the year since 2012, with the banking and finance sector continuing to actively seek space, new figures from CBRE have revealed. The amount of office space under offer on in Central London at the end of Q1 2018 stood at 3.2m sq ft, representing an increase of 6 percent on the previous quarter and showing a 3 percent increase on the same point last year. Take-up in Central London reached 2.8m sq ft in Q1 2018, with its largest deal boasting a 65,900 sq ft letting to WS Atkins at Nova North in Victoria. Availability in Central London increased by 7 percent to 14.3m sq ft but that is still below the total 12 months ago. A total of 1.1m sq ft of development and refurbishment space completed in Q1. A further 2.3m sq ft is expected to complete before the end of the year, of which 54 percent has already been committed to be leased. By the end of the quarter, 9.1m sq ft was being actively sought by occupiers, primarily from the banking and finance sector (26 percent) and creative industries sector (24 percent).

June 4, 2018
Your happiness at work is not just down to your employer
by Cary Cooper and Ivan Robertson • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design
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