3. ANALYSIS OF BENCHMARKING SYSTEM
3.3 Data Structure
3.3.3 Best Practices and Applications
The term best practice for a data structure in a benchmarking process does not refer to a specific absolute best way to organize the data. Best practice can be a very flat data structure, when many, perhaps unqualified, participants are involved, to reduce difficulties in the data collection process. Or it can be a very sophisticated and detailed data structure, when detailed analysis is required and data of high quality can be collected. The design of the data structure depends on the demand of the benchmarking organisation and benchmarking project.
No matter which level of detail the data structure has, it is important that it is defined precisely. A common problem of comparative data analysis is for example that reference values are not used in a uniform way due to ignorance or sometimes to manipulate the result. The data structure has to answer questions like: Does m2 comprise the circulation
BGF Gross ext.
floor area
NGF Gross int.
floor area
KGF Area of internal divisions and external con- structions
NF Floor area
VF Circulation area FF Ancillary area of services
HNF Usable floor area
NNF Area ancillary to main services
HNF 1 Residential and recreational HNF 2 Office space
HNF 3 Production, etc.
HNF 4 Storage, distribution, retail HNF 5 Training, education and culture HNF 6 Health care
Figure 3. Area structure (DIN 277).
3.3.3.2 Building Types
VDI 3807 Part 2 provides a detailed breakdown of the building classification catalogue issued by ARGE-Bau (a professional organisation in the German construction industry). VDI 3807 is available in English.
building code
building type
… …
9131 Libraries
9132 Public Libraries
9140 Buildings for performance
9141 Cinemas, Theatre buildings
9142 Opera Houses
9144 Large halls, municipal auditoriums
9145 Casinos
9146 Leisure centres
9147 Open-air theatres
9150 Community houses
… …
Figure 4. Example for the building classification catalogue (VDI 3807, Blatt2).
(Note: the complete catalogue has 10 Pages with building types.)
The Australian Bureau of statistics uses a building type structure, which is not as complete, the ‘ABS functional classification of buildings – functional classification of building structure’
(ABS 2003) for its statistics.
3.3.3.3 Object Types
DIN 276 provides a list with object types, which was originally developed for cost estimation and cost calculation in the procurement process for buildings. It is widely used in the German construction and real estate industry. Among others for benchmarking building and maintenance cost. Company internal applications add more digits to the cost group code to subdivide the object types.
The advantage of DIN 276 is that extensive databases and software on its basis exist.
DIN 277 gives advice how to link DIN277 and DIN276 to conceive benchmarks.
cost group
object type
… …
420 Heating Supply Utilities 421 Heat Generation Systems 422 Heat Distribution Systems
423 …
… …
430 Ventilation Utilities 431 Ventilation Systems
432 Ventilation Systems with Air Conditioning Functions 433 Ventilation Systems with Full Air Conditioning 434 Ventilation Systems for Process Air
435 Cooling Equipment 439 Other Ventilation Systems 440 Electric Utilities
441 …
… …
Figure 5. Example for the object classification catalogue (DIN 276).
(Note: the complete catalogue has 10 Pages.)
3.3.3.4 Process Types
GEFMA 200 provides a list of process types in a similar style as DIN 276 provides the object types to extend the cost framework for the construction of building into the operation phase (see also cost types). It is suggested to combine DIN 276 and GEFMA 200 to conceive a code for a process, which is performed on an object:
For example,
223.421 Inspection of Heat Generation Systems
224.433 Maintenance of Ventilation Systems with Full Air Conditioning
cost group
process type
… …
220 Operation of Building Service Equipment
221 Commissioning
222 Operating
223 Inspection
224 Maintain
... ...
228 Document
480 Moving and Relocation Management
481 …
… …
630 Contract Management 631 Lease Contracts
632 Energy Supply Contracts
633 …
… …
Figure 6. Example for the object classification catalogue (GEFMA 200).
(Note: the complete catalogue has 10 Pages.)
The American Productivity & Quality Centre (APQC) issued a process classification framework (PCF) as a “high-level, industry-neutral enterprise model that allows organisations to see their activities from a cross-industry process viewpoint” (functional benchmarking).
The section, which would contain facility management processes ‘Acquire, Construct, and Mange Property’ seems not to provide the depth needed for facility management benchmarking.
...
9.0 Acquire, Construct, and Manage Property 9.1 Property design and construction
9.1.1 Develop facility strategy 9.1.2 Develop and construct sites 9.1.3 Plan facility
9.1.3.1 Design facility 9.1.3.2 Analyze budget 9.1.3.3 Select property 9.1.3.4 Negotiate terms
9.1.3.5 Manage construction/building 9.1.3.6 Dispose of old facility 9.1.4 Provide workspace and assets
9.1.4.1 Acquire workspace and assets
9.1.4.2 Change fit/form/function of workspace and assets 9.2 Maintain workplace and assets
9.2.1 Move people and assets 9.2.1.1 Relocate people
9.2.1.2 Relocate material and tools 9.2.2 Repair workplace and assets
9.2.3 Provide preventative maintenance for workplace and assets 9.2.4 Manage security
9.3 Dispose of workspace and assets 9.3.1 Dispose of equipment 9.3.2 Dispose of workspace 9.4 Manage physical risk
9.5 Manage capital asset ...
Figure 7. Example form Process Classification Framework (PCF) (APQC 2004).
3.3.3.5 Cost Group
GEFMA 200 gives a cost structure for facility management. It comprises the areas covered in DIN 276 and GEFMA 200:
Cost Calculation in Facility Management Cost for building and Construction
Cost of the Operation Phase
Building Management
Cost for Maintenance Building New
Changes and Changes of Usage Refurbishment, Improvements Demolishing
General Costs
Technical Building Management Infrastructural Building Management Economic Building Management
Building
Technical Building Equipment Outdoor Areas
Furniture, Inventory, etc.
Figure 8. Cost Calculation Structure (GEFMA 200).
VDI 2067 structures the cost for the calculation of efficiency of building installation to allow full cost calculation:
Capital-bound-costs e.g. investment, replacement Demand-bound-costs e.g. energy costs
Operation-bound-costs e.g. operation, cleaning and maintenance Other costs e.g. insurance, taxes, fees.
Figure 9. Cost Calculation Structure (VDI 2067)
3.3.3.6 IFC Model
the missions and goals of the benchmarking organisation and the situation in which the project takes place. It should also consider the availability of resources to generate the data and the availability of data from benchmark partners.
The data structure should be able to link the organisation specific structure on the lower levels to external data structures on the higher level to enable the integration of the data model into competitive and functional benchmarking projects. This also allows using the database to assess the development of the organisation, when the lower levels of the data structure are adjusted to new needs in the organisation.
It should be avoided to use different data types in one data structure (as done in the SOH structure: geographical data and object type), as this constrains the application of the database to the cases it was designed for or might require redundant data structures for new application cases. Redundancy of data structures should be avoided.
The data structure should be reviewed, when the objectives of the benchmark project the structure of the benchmarked organisation or the performance levels change.
SOH should design its data structure in a way that it is able to support functional benchmarking, as it seems to be very difficult to find partners for competitive benchmarking and as internal benchmarking only provides limited benefit.
3.4 Process Management
3.4.1 Management of the Benchmark Process
As a management technique ‘benchmarking’ is a systematic process to assess and to develop the performance of one object, process or organisation by comparison with the performance of similar objects, processes or organisations. Objects, processes and organisations are analysed and superior features are adopted.
The benchmark process is structured according to Camp (1989) into the steps: planning, analysis, integration and action.
Additional to the performance of the single benchmark steps the integration of the benchmark process into the organisation’s management is a measure for the maturity of the benchmark process. The American Productivity & Quality Center (2001) describes a systematic framework to assess the maturity of the benchmark imitative with the objective to understand the initiative current state and to find opportunities for improvements.
The framework (APQC, 2001) is given in the following table. The maturity of the benchmark process implementation increases from the left to the right of the table. Each row represents a key element of the process. Unfortunately the source gives only descriptions of the levels for key element 1, Table 14.
Table 14: A framework by APQC (2001).
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5
Which of the following descriptions defines your organisation’s orientation towards learning?
1.
Knowledge management/
sharing
Internal financial focus, with short- term focus that reacts to problems
Sees need for external focus to learn
Sets goals for knowledge sharing
Learning is a corporate value
Knowledge sharing is a corporate value
Which of the following descriptions best defines your organisation’s orientation towards improving?
2.
Benchmarking
low maturity high maturity
How are benchmarking activities and/or inquiries handled within your organisation?
3.
Focal point
low maturity high maturity
Which of the following best describes the benchmarking process in your organisation?
4.
Benchmarking
process low maturity high maturity
Which of the following best describes the improvement enablers in place in your organisation?
5.
Improvement
enablers low maturity high maturity
Which of the following best describes your organisation’s approach for capturing and storing best practices information?
6.
Capture
storage low maturity high maturity
Which of the following best describes your organisation’s approach for sharing and disseminating best practices information?
7.
Sharing
dissemination low maturity high maturity
Which of the following best describes your organisation’s approach for encouraging the sharing of best practices information?
8.
Incentives
low maturity high maturity
Which of the following best describes your organisation’s approach for encouraging the sharing of best practices information?
9.
Analysis
low maturity high maturity
How are business impacts that result from benchmarking projects documented within your organisation?
10. Documentation
low maturity high maturity
How would you describe the financial impact resulting from benchmarking projects?
11.
Financial
impact low maturity high maturity
Management of the benchmarking process has to ensure that the process is performed systematically and that each of the steps is defined and delivers the necessary outcome to
The measures are takes for different locations in the building. The locations are identified in a hierarchical data structure.
The benchmark process is currently not designed to disclose management deficits and waste of resources. The benchmark measures are not formally linked to the corporate objectives of SOH.
3.4.2.2 Planning – Identify comparative companies
SOH does not use comparative organisations as benchmark peers. It determines the development of its own performance over time and compares the measured performance with a target value.
3.4.2.3 Planning – Determine data collection methods and collect data
The BPI and BFI are both measured regularly with a simple scoring structure. For the reports the BPI is determined on a weekly basis and the BFI on a quarterly basis by inspection by a representative of SOH and the service provider.
3.4.2.4 Analysis – Determine current performance “gap”
This step is currently not performed systematically in the SOH benchmarking process. The potential of looking at other organisations is not utilized.
3.4.2.5 Analysis – Project future performance levels
The SOH benchmarking system uses fixed target values for BPI and BFI. Additional it formulates deadlines (for cleaning), which might be associated with business alignment issues.
3.4.2.6 Integration – Communicate benchmark findings and gain acceptance
The SOH benchmarking system uses a one-sheet report style with additional diagram pages.The report seems to be targeted at the service providers and the FM staff.
3.4.2.7 Integration – Establish functional goals
The SOH benchmarking system looks at only SOH performance. The functional goals are not systematically based on best practice, but on the situation of the own object. The benchmark is defined as a “desirable standard that should be achieved given sufficient resources and access”.
3.4.2.8 Action – Develop action plans
Operative actions are described in the reports. The SOH benchmark system differentiates between ‘immediate’ and ‘planned’ actions. Strategic actions are not described in the available reports.
3.4.2.9 Action – Implement specific action and monitor progress
The weekly respectively quarterly measurement of BPI and BFI serves as a monitoring procedure in the SOH benchmarking process. The procedure and the report style secure the usefulness of the data for monitoring and controlling.
3.4.2.10 Action – Recalibrate benchmarks
No systematic recalibration process is described in the documents for the SOH benchmarking process.
4 ANALYSIS OF INFORMAITON ON MAINTENANCE
4.1 Information of Building, Asset and Service
Building services are usually a major factor that affects the overall project in terms of its design, cost and management. Despite the importance of building services as part of the daily building operation needs, they are both cost centres and space users. Different building services may require spaces up to 30% of the total building volume, and the combination of essential services could reach 27% of the total building cost (Parlour, 2000).
Benchmarking is a process which requires an over all understanding about different aspects and details of the building and its spaces. Towards this end, acquiring the information about the building facilities, assets and services, is the first step and therefore needs to have some initial techniques range from asset registration and building surveys to more sophisticated methods such as establishing a Building Information Modelling (BIM) system, and automatically data collection and monitoring process.
Building information, assets and services have been identified by Sydney Opera House Management System (SOHMS). In the following section, an overview of SOH general building information, assets and services is presented and listed.
4.1.1 SOH Cases
4.1.1.1 Information of Building and Assets
According to Bromilow (1992), building information for facilities management purposes should be gathered to the most detailed level. Individual items of equipments, fittings, fabrics, and the like need to be recognised by FM personnel who should record the state of each individual item (Condition), what each of them comprises (Content), where it can be found (Location), and when an action should be done to it (Action Scheduling). When there are large numbers of individual properties recorded, it is clear that executive levels of management need the information to be aggregated into successively large groups which cover whole building assets, services, and land/site. A tree-structure suggested by Bromilow et al (1986) to aggregate building information, is an example of information aggregation that could be also used as a model in which information about SOH can be included. The importance of the structure could be recognised as an apparent information hierarchy for recording performance data.
While recording information about every individual space and item in a building is relevant to most organisations for benchmarking purposes, Sydney Opera House cases have different directions since it is a performing centre where gathering data about performing spaces and the associated services is more likely to be relevant. The SOH data structure, developed by SOH BPI and BFI (2004) as a software development scheme, is built upon a 9 level hierarchy which identifies the general framework to locate any given item or element in the SOH. The framework is structured in the order in Table 15.
Table 15: A General Framework to Locate Items or Elements in the SOH.
Level 1 Building & Site Level 2 Story Setting Level 3 Location Zone Level 4 Functional Space Level 5 Room Type Level 6 Room Level 7 Place
Level 8 Element Code Level 9 Sub-Element Code
For example, to identify a stair case in a certain location, the system will look to it in the following hierarchy beginning at the big scale, i.e. the building and site level, to the small details of the element, i.e. the parent level, then the sub-details if available, i.e. the sub element level.
Sydney Opera House's current software development model that shows the hierarchy of tracking down a piece of data about an element is diagrammed in Figure 1.
Figure 10. Hierarchy model from SOH BFI & BPI (2004).
There are four detailed subdivisions of the level hierarchy model in which the asset/element could be identified more accurately:
Sub- element Sub-
location
Element
Location Assets
• Elements (Parent Headers Only): there are a total of 301 defined elements in the SOH, 36 of which are defined as Parent heading for aggregation purposes.
On the other hand, Asset Technologies Pacific has worked out Strategic Asset Maintenance Plan (SAMP) for the SOH. Their scheme (SAMP, 2002), for assets maintenance hierarchy, identifies the asset according to its Location, Sub-location, Elements, Sub-elements and Assets Type respectively and gives a code to the area where the asset is located. It is less complicated and shown in Figure 2.
Figure 11. Hierarchy model from SOH SAMP (2002).
The difference between the two models is that the hierarchy model from SOH BFI & BPI (Figure 1) has the potential of a more logical level hierarchy and details that could extensively be used for three purposes: (1) data collection, (2) Reporting and (3) Maintenance.
Nevertheless, the hierarchy model from SOH SAMP (2002) has initiated a database for a maintenance plan of the current registered elements, sub-elements and assets, for a period up to year 2027. In the database, there are 25 locations, 104 sub-locations, 70 elements, 311 sub-elements and 546 current registered assets.
4.1.1.2 Information of Services
Aggregation of building service information is an important factor that may contribute in structuring and recording performance data of a building. Bromilow (1992) recommended that drawing the building service information in a tree-structure diagram could support decision making in executive and facilities management levels by capturing the overall view of building service components. Main services at the SOH are categorised into 9 headings as listed below:
• HVAC Services (Mechanical Environmental Control)
• Electrical Reticulated Services
• Lighting
• Building Monitoring & Control System
• Fire Services
• Security & Surveillance Systems
• Transportation Services
• Stage Machinery Services
• Communication Services
The tree-structure suggested by Bromilow et al (1986) could be used as an example for the SOH cases to aggregate different building service data according to SOH SAMP (2002). The structure appears in Figure 3.
Services
Chillers
Fan Coil Unit and Package AHU
Pumps Ducti ng
Exhaust and Venti lation Mixing Boxes
Electrical Duct Heaters
Motors/Fans/VSDs & Distribution Plant
General Lighting and Power Concert Hall Lighting Playhouse Lighting Opera Theatre Lighting Drama Theatre Lighting Green Room Lighting The Studio/Westrn Foyer Forecourt Lighting Emergency & Exit Lighting
Detection Systems Autom atic Sprinkler System
Hose Reel s, Hydrants, Extinguishers & Fire Blankets Gas Suppression System
Emergency Warning & Intercom System
Drama Theatre Concert Hall Opera Theatre Play House
Drama Theatre Concert Hall Opera Theatre Play House General Other
Communication Services Stage Machinery Services Transportation Services
Secu rity & Surveillance Systems Fire Services
Building Monitoring & Control System Lighting
Electrical Reticulated Services
HVAC (Mechanical Environmental Control)
Figure 12. A tree structure for SOH service information based on Bromilow et al (1986).
Levels of service are defined by identifying critical success factors and setting levels of
scheme for the contracted services in which to assure quality services and add to its own knowledge system.
4.1.2 Iconic Building and Performance Arts Centre
The Sydney Opera House is one of the most well known iconic buildings in the world and also a performing arts centre. A set of similar iconic buildings and performing arts centres should be sourced to support the SOH benchmarking.
Suggested examples of iconic buildings to look at include St Basil’s, Red Square, Moscow, The Tower of London, The Taj Mahal, The Leaning Tower of Pisa, The Empire Sate Building, New York, and The Chrysler Building, New York. Also the opera houses such as La Scala, Covent Garden, Paris Opera, Esplanade in Singapore can be a target. These similar buildings can facilitate identifying best practices on maintenance including information structure of building, assets and services.
However, there are many differences in different organisations such as legislative requirements, culture, etc. This increases the difficulty in benchmarking comparison.
4.1.3 Summary
To benchmark the information of building, assets and services on maintenance of SOH, a set of benchmarking partners shall be sourced and the best practices shall be identified. This will be carried out during the development of this project.
In general, information of building, assets and services shall be aggregated into the tree- structure containing categories and sub-categories. Figure 4 illustrates a proposed tree- structure that contains two main categories and then sub-categories based on a model by the IAI North American FM Domain Committee, which could be applied to the SOH cases.
Figure 13. A tree-structure that could be applied to SOH cases.