Operational excellence in Facilities Management.

Continued cost reduction & creating a centre of excellence

The Compass Group, a leading UK facilities management company had transformed how it cleaned office space at a prestigious site, reducing operating costs by 40%. Despite the changes, the cleaning operation presented further improvement opportunities. By introducing operational excellence, the aim was to create a centre of excellence and design a model to be rolled across cleaning operations group-wide.

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Coaching, active engagement of staff and standardisation

A 5-week project with the goal of overall operational excellence quickly identified significant activities, from ownership of stakeholder relationships to implementation of cleaning operations, that would deliver the best outcomes within the timeframe. It was essential that key members of the team were coached from the outset and involved in every aspect of the improvement cycle. Through analysis of current processes, opportunities were identified for increasing productivity and quality and for reducing consumable spend.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and visual boards were designed at a team level and implemented together with a daily huddle with a standardised agenda. Route plans reduced the amount of walking required to clean the building. ‘One Best Way’ documents were designed to reduce query time and errors and improve output quality. Standardised trolleys, alongside a ‘prep-in-advance’ process, saved 90 minutes per day previously spent looking for equipment.

Consumable spend analysis identified the servicing and waste removal costs of providing paper towels in washrooms containing hand-dryers. Working with the team and client, it was possible to remove paper towels saving both time and expenditure. In order to ensure better quality assurance and risk management, supervisors were removed from cleaning activity having previously spent 90% of their time cleaning.

New ways of working had created enough capacity to free up supervisors’ time. Quality standards improved and operational excellence was achieved as supervisors were then able to provide quality coaching and feedback to their team members.

The final stage was the development of a company-wide deployment plan and methodology for the delivery of a standard model across all the business’ cleaning operations.

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£18,000 reduction in annual consumable spend

This was achieved through elimination of paper towels from washrooms.