Facilities Management is critical for our service charge properties with common areas.
We have an extensive network of trusted contractors for services such as cleaning, landscaping and legislatory compliance for fire, water and emergency lighting checks, lift servicing and general repairs.
We ensure our properties’ facilities management function is covered off, where applicable, by using our health and safety trackers and through regular inspections.
How we can help
- Overseeing contractors
- Running service charge budgets & progressing reconciliations
- Managing health and safety risk
Our Facilities Management Services
We work extremely closely with trusted contractors to agree what works need to be progressed under service charge contracts.
This can vary from ‘soft services’ such as cleaning and landscaping to ‘hard services’ including contracts for air conditioning maintenance, fire and emergency lighting systems and regular lift servicing. It is critical that relevant contracts are up to date with agreed service level expectations and clear terms, conditions and costs – and our experienced team ensures that all these aspects are met.
It is also essential that we have ‘scoped the site’ initially and identified those areas which are the responsibility of the occupier, those which are under the landlord’s control and also all common areas.
Our team employs the services of an invaluable network of high-quality contractors across the UK to ensure necessary works are completed quickly and efficiently.
This often involves working out of hours or at short notice, and our trusted, often long-standing relationships help to ensure that occupier and third party and client works are progressed smoothly.
We are aware that our trusted contractors often represent our business and therefore it is essential there is clear communication regarding access and that we have great follow-up to ensure that all relevant points of contact are aware of progress in respect of contractor work.
In accordance with the RICS Service Charge Practice Statement, we – as a regulated firm – follow an agreed process for service charge budget setting
Many of our managed properties have common areas subject to service charge budgets. We scope-out the sites to determine what services are required and work with the leases to ensure a fair apportioned cost per occupier.
We use RICS templates and cost codes which facilitates best practice service charge budget setting. We are able to progress service charge budgets for offices, retail or industrial properties and for properties which require multiple schedules due to a range of occupiers who contribute to different services.
Each year, all our managed properties with service charges undergo a reconciliation.
The service charges are reconciled in accordance with the RICS Service Charge Practice Statement which specifies given timescales and recommendations for completing the process. Where expenditure has been over the budget level, a top-up demand is issued and where expenditure has been lower than the budget, a credit is applied to the occupier account.
We use best practice RICS templates and are able to look at reconciliations required for offices, retail or industrial properties and properties which have multiple schedules. Where there is a clear variance within a cost code, we provide comments confirming the reason for the variance. This helps to explain why there is an over or underspend within a particular area.
The Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 oversees all statutory procedures required whether it be regarding fire, utilities, or the physical nature of our sites.
It also ensures we look at risk assessments and method statements from our contractors. The importance of contractor’s liability insurance is critical, and we use a comprehensive health and safety matrix to keep track of ongoing compliance.
We review the position for all of our trusted contractors annually and this ensures we remain up to date in conjunction with our suppliers in respect of liability insurance. We also review what services are required for our sites to eliminate risks where possible and help keep them safe.
Where our contractors (and those of occupiers and third parties) carry out works on a client’s assets, risk audits are critical to reduce the risk of injury.
We ensure these are carried out as a matter of course, and – where appropriate – we also use external consultants to conduct risk audits to maintain best practice.
The risk audits provide timescales for rectification of any risks and categorise the risk itself into low, medium or high risk based on the probability of an event happening. We then progress all we can to eliminate or at least mitigate risks with the help of our contractors and supplier network.
