Interserve Preferred Bidder for Ealing

11 March 2009

Interserve, the services, maintenance and building group, has been named preferred bidder for a 10‑year, total facilities management contract by Ealing Council. The contract is worth £5 million a year for the core sites, with the potential to provide additional services to any of the borough’s 91 schools which choose to opt in.

Ealing is London’s third-largest borough, with a population of 310,000. The 237 council buildings include offices, libraries, listed town halls, sports and leisure centres, cemeteries and residential and sheltered housing. Together these have a floor area of more than 230,000 sq m – equivalent to some 32 football pitches. In addition the schools which may opt in, ranging from nurseries to high schools, have a total floor area of over 300,000 sq m.

The contract involves the integrated management and delivery of a broad range of services including:

Property management service
Helpdesk
Building and asset maintenance management service, including space planning
Grounds maintenance
Security/guarding including systems and CCTV monitoring
Cleaning, including window cleaning
Catering
Utility and performance reporting

Interserve, through its RENEWABLES programme, will play a major role in helping Ealing to achieve and move beyond its sustainability targets in areas such as waste and recycling, energy and water consumption and carbon emissions.

Beyond the provision of the services listed above, Interserve’s strategic role will include the development and deployment of a “workspace support model”. This is an approach to managing the workplace that enables council officers to work flexibly in high-performing teams. It focuses on effective design of the working environment, the creation of maintenance regimes which maximise efficiency over the building’s life cycle, and the integration of support services into regular operations so that they work seamlessly together. This will provide both Interserve and Ealing Council with an exemplar model for estate rationalisation and efficiency in local government.

To manage this long-term project and maintain the momentum to drive innovation and change, Interserve and Ealing Council have jointly devised an innovative governance model. This will consist of individuals from both parties working in true partnership to create a single delivery structure, ensuring the minimum in overlap of roles, reducing operating costs and improving decision making and service quality.

“This is a first for local government,” noted Bruce Melizan, Interserve Executive Director. “In combining asset and workplace management with a broad range of FM services, establishing an innovative method of governance and doing so with sustainability running like a vein throughout, we have created a model that matches Ealing Council’s vision for a fresh approach to service delivery.”

Roger Amos, Ealing Council’s Head of Property Services, said, “We are very excited about our new partnership with Interserve. After a very ambitious and challenging project to procure this contract, we are delighted with the outcome and very much looking forward to seeing this partnership develop and become the ‘best in class’ for property and facilities management in the public sector.”