FM Report 197 - Tuesday 29th May 2007

29 May 2007

The latest FM news direct to your desktop.

Smart meters for business and homes
The Government's Energy White Paper published last week provides a boost for smart energy metering in the home and workplace. This move is supported by research published by the Carbon Trust that showed that SMEs using smart readers saved £1,000 on their energy bills. The White Paper also aims to extend emissions trading to large commercial organisations such as banks, supermarkets and large local authorities through a cap-and-trade 'Carbon Reduction Commitment', and it will examine licensing arrangements for localised energy production by the end of 2008 with clear export tariffs from all six major energy suppliers for microgenerators to sell excess electricity.
www.dti.gov.uk/energy/whitepaper

Quality mark for smarter working
Organisations that have introduced smarter working practices can now qualify for a new Quality Mark developed by Work Wise UK. Launched at the Work Wise UK Summit recently by Sir Digby Jones, UK Skills Envoy, the new quality mark will allow any organisation to gain recognition for their successful introduction of new smarter working practices.
www.workwiseuk.org

Occupier Satisfaction Index launched
The inaugural 2007 Occupier Satisfaction Index (OSI), has published the first phase of a three-year research project to measure occupier satisfaction across the UK office, industrial and retail sectors. Commissioned by the Property Industry Alliance (RICS, the British Property Federation, the BCO and the Investment Property Forum) in conjunction with CoreNet Global UK, and carried out by IPD Occupiers and Kingsley Lipsey Morgan, the research reveals that the overall UK Occupier Satisfaction Index for 2007 is 55 out of a possible 100. In the office sector it is 59, for the industrial sector, 55, and 52 for the retail sector.
www.occupier-satisfaction.co.

BSA seeks new leader
Norman Rose, Director General of the BSA for the past 11 years is to leave at the end of August. The BSA represents 19 of the largest companies in the business services and FM marketplace, together employing 650,000 staff. During his tenure as Director General, Rose has supported BSA members through issues such as TUPE and the growth of PFI and PPP contracting in discussions with government and the unions.
www.pfmmagazine.co.uk/...

Green agenda boosts social housing maintenance market
Chairman of the Housing Corporation, Peter Dixon, told social housing construction and maintenance companies that the potential for more work into the future delivering affordable sustainable homes and retrofitting the 5 million existing homes for a low carbon future. Speaking at a dinner hosted by Grant Thornton and Barclays, he also noted that the entire affordable housing sector has to make £1.66bn efficiency savings over the next three years. Serco Solution's CEO Kevin Lavery talked of the potential for the market in future and the need for both housing associations and service providers to join into larger units to realise efficiencies.
www.pfmmagazine.co.uk...

Two into one as Johnson Facilities Management
As the concluding part of a divisional restructure, the Johnson Service Group's specialist FM divisions, Workplace Management and SGP Property Services have been brought together as Johnson Facilities Management. The combined organisation will continue to provide specialist FM, building services and property management services to clients in the retail, corporate and public sectors, and will continue to trade under their respective brands.
www.johnsonplc.com

DTI turns to EC Harris
EC Harris has won the managing agent contract with the DTI, in a deal worth £18m a year, and covering 18 buildings in the UK occupied by 5,000 staff and visited by 12,000 people every month. EC Harris will manage building services, catering, energy, environment, waste, security, business continuity, client and visitor hospitality, H&S and physical security.
www.echarris.com

Chemical waste division at PHS
PHS has combined three companies in its waste management division and integrated them with two new acquisitions to form a separate Chemical Division. The five companies are Reformation, SWS, Wastecare (GB), RRM and De-Pack. Called Wastemanagement, the new division will concentrate on pharmaceutical, clinical and dental wastes.
www.phs.co.uk

BIFM sustainability survey
A survey to find out what tools and information FMs need to be more sustainable and raise employee awareness has been launched by BIFM as part of the Sustainable FM Knowledge Transfer project with the University of Reading. The survey runs to 19th June and is open to BIFM members and non-members alike.
www.bifm.org.ik/bifm/survey

HSE and HSC set to merge
The Health and Safety Commission is to move to the next stage of its consultation process on its merger with the HSE. Consultation carried out earlier this year showed that 80% of respondents agreed that the HSC and HSE should merge to form one unitary body to be known as the Health & Safety Executive
www.hse.gov.uk

Incentive looks abroad
Incentive FM has created an international team following a number of overseas contract wins in the past 12 months. These include a European review of the FM structure at global automotive component suppliers, Delphi. Incentive has produced benchmarking reports and cost reduction suggestions for its automotive sites in Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the UK, and is now looking at sites in Turkey, Morocco, Portugal and Poland.
www.incentive-fm.com

Temporary venues for London 2012
The ODA is holding an industry day on Wednesday 13th June in London for suppliers and contractors of medium to long span fully enclosed lightweight temporary venues. The focus will be on structures for basketball, fencing and hockey which will be operational 18 months before the Games are held.
Temporaryvenuesindustryday@london2012.com

Free seminar and free audit for your data centre
Delegates to a FREE seminar on improving energy efficiency in data centres together with server virtualisation and virtual facilities, will be offered a FREE high level audit to establish your Datacentre Efficiency Ratio.The seminar is organised by Keysource, APC, Sun Microsystems, Future Facilities and Datacentre Solutions and is to be held at the Energy Clinic in London from 3pm on 19th June.
0845 2043333

Oops!
Our apologies to Michael Glass for erroneously saying in FM Report 196 that he had resigned from the BIFM Members Council and as Chair of the Midlands Region. In fact, although he has resigned from the BIFM Board, but he is still a Member of the Council and Chair of the Midlands Region.