Glasgow Schools PFI
Glasgow Schools, the largest education PFI in Europe worth 1.2bn, was awarded to Amey plc and its consortium partners, Miller Group and Halifax plc in July 2000. Britain's largest public-private partnership provides a cleverly modeled solution for Glasgow's 30,000 secondary school pupils, by combining FM operation and construction involving the building of 12 new schools, the modernisation of 17 schools and the provision of full support services for a 30-year period.
Amey plc has taken a leading role in the project, providing a broad range of services including janitorial, cleaning, building and grounds maintenance, security, waste disposal and disaster management. A core part of the operation is the Help Desk, for which Amey has formed a partnership with CAFM provider Service Works Global, utilising their system QFM, to provide 24 hour, 365 day a year support from Amey's Maidenhead Headquarters. Service Works Global has developed a solution whereby ten Glasgow based Amey Facilities Managers and two Glasgow City Council personnel have full access to the system at Maidenhead. In addition, each school has access to QFM over the Web so that they can view their own jobs and oversee the whole process of service response within their establishment. With QFM in place, Amey can manage the service delivery for the contract, also, the client, Glasgow City Council, can simultaneously monitor the activity of Amey. In addition, Amey links their principle contractors into QFM, so that they too have visibility of their contract performance. Prior to this, the contractors used their own systems, which created issues such as duplication and timing disputes as to when the Help Desk call was raised. "It was crucial to all parties involved that only one system was in operation to minimise administration and maximise service delivery," says Grant Henderson, Amey's Head of Facilities Management for Glasgow Schools, "because most of the events have to be closed down within a matter of hours. Half an hours delay because a fax hasn't been transmitted, can mean the difference between meeting a service level agreement and incurring a penalty. We have found that the implementation of QFM has resulted in a staggering 70% improvement in contractor service performance."
Prior to using QFM, the Audit Office within Glasgow City Council had to sift through mountains of paperwork so that they could accurately monitor the service from Amey. Now, by using QFM and its unique PFI payment mechanism system, both the Audit Office and the Financial Team have immediate access to this information, so even though Amey submit formal reports each month, the council have already been able to access this information. "Without QFM, our client, Glasgow City Council would undoubtedly have incurred significant additional costs to audit the FM service accurately," reports Grant Henderson. "Before QFM was installed, audits and performance levels were calculated manually. Information was taken from the Help Desk and each event was reviewed as to whether Amey had passed or failed and whether the failed event incurred a penalty. This was a long mathematical process and took about three weeks to calculate, because there are between 1,600 and 2,000 events each month," he says. "This information is now available at the touch of a button." The Audit and Monitoring Team also use QFM to review the status of events and highlight recurring faults within a given school. "This cuts down on information transfer, because you don't have to explain what the problems and solutions are, because both organisations can access the narrative on the screen. This is ideal for the auditing team, because they can also answer queries from other Council departments. For example, if another division within the council wants to switch the water off in a school, then QFM can identify the effects of the shut down. Likewise if the water supply is switched off for multiple schools, this information can be recorded on QFM as one call and cascaded down to each school via the Help Desk," says Grant Henderson.
"Amey has an 'open book' policy with Glasgow City Council, so as events unfold, they have the ability to view and interpret the information immediately. This drives both parties to be far more proactive and ensures that Amey, inline with its policy, is client driven, offering solutions rather than problems," he explains.
"In addition to providing building management for the schools," reports Grant Henderson, "QFM also manages much more important issues such as security. Security has become a priority for schools over recent years and the QFM Help Desk provides an important link between the schools and Amey, ensuring that security is maximised and breach is minimised. So if, for example there is a security problem or an accident in the playground, then one number can be called to access the Help Desk. QFM holds the correct contact numbers for an emergency, so that a school janitor can be paged immediately. Also if there is a fire in a school, the system will manage the re-location information for pupils on the following day." This is made possible by QFM providing a performance measurement tool that calculates the number of pupil places and allocates them to an area. This effectively is a weighting component that is used to indicate the impact of an event on a school.
QFM provides extensive reporting for Amey, including operational reports, performance statistics, financial reports, KPI's, and reactive maintenance reports (including identifying the number of repairs caused by vandalism and dividing them into those that occur inside and outside of school hours). The reports also calculate if any penalties are liable for failed events.
Amey and Service Works Global have developed a highly productive and mutually supportive relationship for the Glasgow Schools contract. Having successfully translated the requirement of the client, they have developed a unique solution to encompass their needs. "So much of the process is managed by QFM, not just the failures but also the requirements," says Grant Henderson. "Both Service Works Global and the product, QFM, provide excellent response times. QFM has to work quickly enough so that when someone contacts the Help Desk, they can meet a 30 second response level. There is an additional 2 minutes in which to obtain the remainder of the information from the caller. This means that the system has to be quick and easy to use. Although in the past, Glasgow City Council was used to having a Help Desk as an aid to communication, QFM now provides them with a quality management audit tool," he explains. "The relationship that we have established for the contracts is virtually seamless and has undoubtedly assisted us in being short listed for other PFI projects."