How to use this program

 

LOGIN

 

Once you have registered as a Licensee you will be given a User Name and Password. From the ‘Start Program’ tab on the Welcome Page you will open up the following screen:

 

 

 

In the Client Login section insert your User Name and Password

 

 

 

BUILDINGS AND GROUPS

Buildings

 

The buildings you want to benchmark/ estimate will have already been entered on your behalf from information you have provided.

 

The system can handle as many different building use categories as you want in a single group, and the user can create as many groups as desired. Each building is simply given its own unique reference and classified in such a way that its use and special features are instantly identifiable. For example, one user has adopted these classifications:

 

OH: Offices – headquarters

OB: Offices – back

OA: Offices – attached to industrial buildings

WSG: Workshops – general purpose

WSI: Workshops – with industrial services

LG: Laboratory – general purpose

LS: Laboratory – special purpose

CS: Common support buildings (typically boiler houses, transformer sub-stations and similar types)

 

You will already have agreed the categories you wish to adopt and their acronyms with the Licensor and they will be displayed with their reference Nos. on the Operating screens we will tell you about below.

 

Groups

 

The creation of a Group or Groups of buildings will also have been pre-determined and the allocation of the buildings to their Groups will have been carried out by the Licensor. You can have

as many Groups as you like but it is best if you keep the number as small as possible; ideally buildings should be grouped  within their  common economic  regions within  countries. Groups must not span countries and at present the specific cost implications of regional locations within a country can only be shown where they are grouped according to these locations.

 

Where necessary buildings can be separately assessed for their individual locations.

 

OPENING UP THE PROGRAM

 

Click on Next>> on the Registration Screen and the General Options screen will appear.

 

 

 

The only option for Licensees is the first one – ‘Continue to site costing analysis’ because at present the setting up of buildings and groups in the program is the sole responsibility of the Licensor.

 

Selecting the first option by clicking on Next>> you will then be presented with a screen offering you 3 options as follows:

 

 

 

If you are starting from scratch you must select the option ‘Begin new site costing analysis’’. The other 2 options clearly are only available when you have carried out and saved one or more surveys. If you need to

 

 

just click one of the tabs in the top right hand corner of the screen.

 

 

BEGIN NEW SITE COSTING ANALYSIS

Naming the analysis

 

Each survey must have its own identification. We recommend a continuous set of letters and numbers as follows:

 

e.g. BWDGCL28090909 – 1 where :

 

n       BW = author’s initials

n       DG= acronym for the Group – say Demo Group or, if you are just surveying one building, the code for the building – say HO for Head Office (BWHOCL280909)

n       CL =Cleaning – but could be SM,FM or SY for Services Maintenance, Fabric Maintenance or Security for example.

n       280909 =date

n       -1 =version

 

Selecting the Group and Cost Centre

 

You then select the Group the building is in (if applicable) and the Cost Centre you want to test – in this case Cleaning. If you try to select a cost centre that is not yet ready for operation you will get a prompt as follows:

 

 

 

Note the name given here to the proposed new analysis for the Distribution Cost Centre.

 

We cannot show you the name of the Group in this text as we are taking the screenshots from a live project and must protect the Licensee’s anonymity.

 

However we show below the Cleaning selected from the full list of modules currently available (including those which are not yet web-enabled) :

 

 

 

 

 

By clicking on Next>> we then open up the Cleaning module at the first screen which is part of the Section ‘General’:

 

 

 

The Operational screen

 

There are several operations to be carried out from this screen, so, starting from the top:

 

 

 

BWDGCL280909-1 and SAVE (also saving the original which will be saved under its own name) or just use the survey for, say, sensitivity testing and don’t bother to SAVE in which case the original will remain intact and all your doodled answers will not be saved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever you do, do NOT exit the program via the Close Program button! You will lose all unsaved information.

 

·         New Name for survey

 

 

 This is the name you gave the original survey. If you want to save an amended version you can simply copy this into the SAVE box above and add the -1 suffix, so BWDGCL280909-1

 

·         Select sub-element

 

 

Each Cost Centre is broken down into the sub-elements which form the total scope of the operations included in the service. These are set out across the screen and you can access the question screens for any one of them by clicking on the name.

 

The ‘General’  screen for Cleaning is displayed above.

 

 

·         Other functions

 As well as those for accessing the other sub-elements there are buttons for other functions; these are described in more detail below

 

 

·         Exiting the screens

 

 

You can answer the questions in any order but it is best to start at the beginning! Unless you answer all the questions you will not be able to generate a cost benchmark. The current question is lined in red.

 

 

 

The first question asks about the date for the survey and there is a dropdown menu of dates from which to choose.

 

 

 If you are not sure how to answer the question, or need to know if there is anything special to be taken into consideration before deciding, click on the

 

     alongside  the question when the Helptext will  appear on your screen:

 

 

 

         Having made your selection you must Click on

 

       which will take you to Q2.

 

 

       The program will give you a running graphic depiction of the outcome of the selections you have made and the data you have entered; the Actual and Benchmark for the overall survey is given on the left of the graphics box. ’ On the right the benchmarks will be shown for each building category you have included in the survey.

 

 

       We now skip the next couple of questions and move on to the Operational Screens which form the essence of the program. The EstatesMaster version is illustrated here but the single  building version is almost identical.

 

The screen we are now looking at is in the Occupiable Areas sub-element of Cleaning. We arrive here after all the other screens have been completed and we are now reviewing our answers to this question.

 

Graphics Box

 

 Note that the Graphics Box at bottom left is registering an excess of Benchmark over Actual (a rare occurrence which probably means something is wrong in the way the questions have been answered!).. Benchmarks for the individual categories of buildings are to the right of the Graphics Box.

 

Building Categories

 

 

The building categories we have selected for this Group are shown on the left-hand edge of the Percentage Allocation Box –see below. The green OK means that answers to this question have been completed for all the building categories in the Group

 

Percentage Allocation Box

 

 

 

The EstatesMaster version allows you to answer the question either building-by-building or for various proportions of the buildings in each category. The Percentage Allocation Box is used for the latter purpose. Here you can see that all the categories have been estimated at ‘Fairly Low’ (see Helptext for definition) except for the Head Office (OH)  which is set at ‘Average’.

 

The 100% could have been split between the answers to this question for each or any of the categories.In this example the answer for the OH category has been given for the individual building (see below) which is why it is in the column ‘Bld’ (for Building-specific) as opposed to ‘Est’ (for Estimated Percentage). The screenshot below shows this splitting partly completed for the OA category; the -50% is a warning that the allocation must be made up to 100% otherwise the program will not allow you to move on to the next screen.

 

The program looks up the calibrated cost impact of each answer (Average, Fairly High etc.) and allocates it to the building categories in proportion to their gross floor areas. It further allocates the cost impacts to the buildings in each category according to their gross floor areas.

 

Splitting the allocation

 

 

Answering for individual buildings

 

The above screenshot also depicts the Individual Building Selection Box. The dropdown menu in the middle of this picture headed ‘Display Building Type’ is set to show all the buildings in the Group. It shows the Building Code - 63.01 etc.- and the category each building is in

 

Here the OH building is seen as individually selected as ‘Average’; as this is the only building of its category in this Group it is also set as 100% in the ‘Bld’ column of the % allocation Box above. The latter % can only be changed by altering the answer in the Individual Buildings Box. This individual selection is useful in an estate where one or more of the buildings are particularly significant and you want to see how the answer to the question impacts on it directly. It also enables the benchmark locked on to this answer to be allocated directly to the building rather than merely being allocated from the whole category answers. This is only an example and clearly in practice you would not use this feature in a case like this where there is only one building in the category .

 

You can see all the buildings in one category, e.g. all the OB (Back Offices) here:

 

 

And you have the option to ‘Select All’ or Select-None’ of these buildings as an alternative to using the Percentage Allocation Box above , by left-clicking on the Answer column heading. Here the answer Absolute Minimum has been selected for all the OB buildings in the Group.

 

Moving on

 

Once you are happy with your answers you can move on to any other question in this or any other sub-element. You can go to the next question by clicking on Next&Save>> or to the previous question using Previous&Save<< . Once you have done this any cost impacts will be brought into play and the new answers will be available in graphic form as below or by going to the Summary – see later.

 

 

Moving to another sub-element

 

Alternatively, click on the sub-element button at the top of the screen if you want to look at one of the other sub-elements e.g Waste Management as shown here.

 

 

The Adjustments Screen

 

 

 

On this page you have the opportunity to make adjustments to the calibration for a variety of different eventualities.ie.

 

Properties.

 

Click on the Properties button on the top menu bar and you will get a screen which allows you to make notes, comments and queries for future reference in respect of the answers given to individual questions. On completion Click on ‘Return to Questions’ to continue with the survey.

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View Previous Answers

 

From the Questions screen you can review the answers you have made to other questions by Clicking on ‘View Previous Answers’. This screen also forms the basis of the Report which the program will provide  in pdf format for printing out as necessary.

 

 

Waiting for the web-screen

 

 

The advantages of having this program web-enabled are enormous, not least because it does not involve updating and sending out software so it can always be instantly updated and improved wherever you are. Nevertheless there will always be times when the internet is exceptionally busy so at these times please be patient – and try to remember how many weeks it used to take consultants to get to an equivalent answer to the one this program can get you to in minutes – and unlikely to be a more reliable one than you get from this program when the questions are properly answered!

 

 

The Summary

 

So now to the output from all the hard work you have put into making all the answers as reliable as possible. Click on ‘Summary’ on the top menu bar:

 

 

The orange box at top-left shows the figure you put in at Q2 less any adjustments you have made at Q.38-39 (see above).

 

The grey box at top-right gives the overall benchmark for the Cost Centre based on the answers you have given to the questions.

 

The other white boxes show how the benchmark or estimate  is divided between the different categories.

 

The Benchmark

 

 As stated in the Introduction to this program the benchmark produced is a best-performance target based on the answers you have given to the questions – each of which has been identified as being of the greatest significance in terms of the resources that need to be allocated to the service in the particular circumstances.

 

The benchmarks are specific to your site and buildings and have their roots in the authors’ massive data-base and great experience of estimating and benchmarking costs of facilities services (see Introduction).

 

If there is a discrepancy between the Actuals and the Benchmarks it will be because :

 

 

One thing however you can be sure of –

 

THE BENCHMARK IS HIGHLY UNLIKELY TO BE WRONG PROVIDED YOU HAVE ANSWERED THE QUESTIONS CORRECTLY.

 

Please don’t fall into the trap of believing that the program is not calculating properly or is wrongly calibrated because it won’t be. The truth may not lie in any inefficiency or exceptional efficiency but in the data being used in the process. If that is all that is wrong it is still as well to find out about it – better than carry on working with unsatisfactory grasp of the cost structure of your facilities!

 

First strike

 

The benchmarks have been found over and over again to be very close to the actuals in well-run facilities. However, no claim is made for the program to produce anything other than ‘First Strike’ benchmarks – i.e. benchmarks that will highlight services in buildings which appear to be out of kilter with the norm for what is being provided.

 

Anything within 10% to 15% of the benchmark may not be considered to be worth investigating further unless it is a large expenditure, although the probability is that the benchmark produced by the model is a realistic target cost for the service.

 

Individual Building Benchmarks

 

 

Finally, the ‘Building Costs’  tab on the top bar menu will take you to an analysis of the benchmark per sq.m GIA for each individual building. This analysis takes into account the %age allocations made for the category and any individually answered questions for specific buildings