Flinders University enjoys a well-justified reputation for its excellence in teaching and research. It has a long-standing commitment to enhancing educational opportunities for all and a proud record of community engagement, innovative research and high quality teaching.

Flinders have led the way in providing access to higher education for individuals who did not traditionally aspire to University attracting students from over 100 countries. As a result their alumni have built careers and lives that enrich communities across Australia and throughout the world.

Flinders' achievements are underpinned by the network of strong external links that they have developed with the stakeholders and with the communities they serve. Their commit is to being a university that is outwardly engaging, continuing to build supportive and valued relationships vital for the future.  Therefore being proactive in finding ways to reduce their carbon footprint is just another example of their commitment.

The focus on global warming is bringing home the need for organizations large and small to be conscious of the impact their operations on their surrounding environment and to take responsibility to ensure that impact is reduced.  Flinders University like most institutions has over time transitioned from providing most of its facility services in house to progressively outsourcing them.  
In addressing the need to ensure they were doing all they could  to take responsibility for their carbon footprint the university looked at the various outsourced services they engaged and how they could be more effectively managed.  It will come as no surprise that next to transportation and energy consumption, cleaning and the collection of waste was a service on a day to day basis that had a significant impact on the surrounding environment and consequently represented a prime opportunity to change the way it was managed.

 

Along with sustainable work practices all business are struggling with the impact of the global financial crisis and the demand to reduce operating costs.  Again it will come as no surprise that reducing those costs usually means slashing the cleaning budget.  So the University was faced with an additional challenge. But it doesn’t stop there; they were also looking at the impact of the cleaning industry award modernization on their cleaning budget.

To address these challenges the University engaged with consulting firm Changing Directions to review its current processes and identify where changes could be made to achieve the following objectives;

• Address stakeholder needs and improve student visitor experiences
• Achieve industry best practice for this industry sector
• Implement  sustainable practices and monitor compliance
• Achieve environmental goals
• Adjust contracts to make them more transparent  and accountable
• Identify ways to measure performance outcomes
• Look at ways to introduce innovate contract management processes
• Achieve best value for money outcomes

Changing directions identified that to achieve these goals would require the involvement of all stakeholders. Additionally  the University would need to rethink the way its contracts were documented, which would include a clear definition of the scope required and well defined key performance indicators that measured all components of the service delivery and a balanced score card approach to monitor outcomes.

 

The last thing the university wanted was a green wash approach to sustainability. Therefore a key component of the contract was defining the sustainable requirements to be achieved and how they would be delivered and measured to ensure the objectives were being met.

This would also need to define the processes that were to be used such as HEPA filtration and microfibre technology as well as clearly defining chemicals that were not considered acceptable in a green cleaning environment and the requirement to utilise equipment that would reduce the use of resources.

The final piece of the process that was critically important was defining how the service would be managed and how the delivery would be measured to achieve the Universities goals.
The outcome of the process was a contract that clearly defined the Universities objectives and an innovative contract management process that involved all stakeholders in the monitoring of performance outcomes in Real Time utilising the state of the Art web base performance monitoring system CiMAS.

The success of the Universities innovative approach lies in its performance Management process that involves all stakeholders including the independent auditor in monitoring performance and reporting issues in real time...  This includes being able to access all reports uploaded by the contractor to the Universities web portal which also provided access to specifications, schedules, compliance documents and day to day inspection outcomes.

From the contractor perspective it allow them to receive immediate email notification each day on issues identified, by location, building and staff members allowing them  to respond within 24 hours. The process thus reduces the waste of valuable resources and the time spent attending meeting that report on issues long since rectified.

The process not only allows the university to monitor performance standards, it also allows it to monitor risk, OH&S, QA, recycling, environmental , waste, and a multitude of compliance issues in real time. The same inspection process used by the University is also made available to the contractor and the independent auditor.

The outcome of the whole process meant that Flinders University were able to go to the market with a contract that clearly articulated all their requirements, addressed the environmental and sustainability issues and at the same time met the requirements of the award modernisation.

Director, Building & Property David Banks commented; “The assistance provided by Changing Directions has been very beneficial in allowing Flinders University to move forward quickly to develop good practices, good contact management processes and good cleaning standards for the University”.