Collaborative working set to be a BSI standard

21 January 2009

An FM service provider is set to be one of five organisations in a pilot project to make collaborative working a formal certification under the British Standards.

The project is to move PAS11000, the publicly available specification to encourage collaborative working, into a BSI notation, according to Les Pyle, chief executive of Partnership Sourcing Ltd. PSL is a joint initiative between the government and employers’ body the CBI, to promote collaborative working. Pyle was speaking speaking at the 24th FM Forum held yesterday at the Stansted Radisson.

PAS 11000 Collaborative Business Relationships, was launched in 2006, and is an eight stage framework that enables organisations to develop and manage their own approaches to working with other organisations more effectively.

The names of the five pilot companies will be formally announced in May. They will be recruited from PSL’s executive partnering knowledge network, whose FM members include Cofathec, Emcor and Serco. Once the pilot is completed, the process will be opened up to wider business community and will be known as BS1100. Eventually in time this will become an ISO certification.

“Everything in business stems from relationships so the more effort you put into building relationships, the more benefit you will reap,” Pyle told delegates. Partnering is essential in a recession, he said, calling on organisations to get closer to their customers, suppliers and staff so that everybody understands what the challenges and issues are. “Communicate, communicate, communicate, those are the key things to do in a recession.”

Pyle went on to criticise the public sector’s procurement practice arguing that the days of the public sector buying purely on price have to end. “Price does not mean value,” he declared. “The three to five year contract term remains a challenge. There is work to be done to get the government to understand the impact of relationship building. Procurement is still driven by price, cost and only occasionally value. Getting people to think outside that relationships are fundamental to delivering value, is a challenge. But the public sector is beginning to wake up to that.”