Business collaboration – setting new standards

Author : Chris Odam and Steve Harrup

27 April 2012

The Facilities Management sector is large and complex, expanding and evolving continuously to include the management of an increasingly broad range of tangible assets, support services and people skills.

Many organisations have sought to develop partnerships as a way of delivering service excellence in the complex borderless organisational structures that have developed to meet current day business agendas and customer expectations

‘Business collaboration’ is now a real alternative for organisations to move away from the adversarial approach to contracting to higher trust and obligation relationships built on a ‘win – win’ basis for all parties. They involve a level of trust that expects all those involved to do what they have said they will do. Communication and co-operation are key elements to the success of a collaborative arrangement.

Partnership Sourcing Limited (PSL) has played a key part in developing a new British Standard (BS11000) Collaborative Business Relationships. It represents a landmark for business as the ?rst national standard in the world to address Business collaboration.

Early in 2010 five organisations – EMCOR UK, Lockheed Martin, NATS, Raytheon Systems and VT Group agreed to work on a pilot programme to develop the standard. They were all successful in achieving PAS 11000, the staging post to full BS certification, and all have now progressed to achieving the full British Standard.

Since 2010, a further 150 organisations have embarked on the BS11000 journey with PSL working with a number of business sectors to further develop collaborative working across the UK and Europe.

The Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) Facilities Management Group is keen to promote excellence in the management of facilities. The introduction of a British Standard on Relationship Management would appear to be a unique opportunity for organisations and Facilities Managers to adopt a standard that has credibility to demonstrate and communicate to all stakeholders the effectiveness and success of the business relationship and provide a development path for the future.

BS 11000 maps the key areas that all organisations should address. The ?rst phase focuses on how to link collaborative approaches with the overall business strategy and operation; the second phase is about engagement; and the third phase is about managing the relationship.

It can be a complex picture; however the standard provides a common life-cycle route map which takes account of existing good practice, but also gives guidance where improvement or new ways of working are required. It also provides a methodology to monitor progress across the organisation. Its ultimate aim is to create greater value for all parties.

There is real momentum building with organisations who can see the benefit of attaining BS11000. Many of these talk of enhancing competitiveness and performance, improving cost management and use of resources, working on joint risk and opportunities and going the extra mile to find additional value and innovation from collaborative working.

Looking forward work is already underway to transition BS11000 to an ISO standard in the next two to three years, thus creating a framework for organisations to collaborate on a global basis.

The CIOB in conjunction with PSL has organised a seminar to be held on the 29th May 2012 at CIOB Headquarters Englemere, Ascot to promote the attributes of BS11000 and demonstrate case examples of its implementation.
(see link http://www.ciob.org.uk/events/partnerships-facilities-management-setting-new-standards or contact Adam Hollis on 01344 630734 or e-mail ahollis@ciob.org.uk to book or for further details).

The authors are:
Chris Odam Associate Director PSL
Steve Harrup Chair CIOB Facilities Management Group