The creation of a management‐by‐variance tool for facilities management performance assessment

The need to establish key performance indicators for facilities management (FM) is well recognised. However, difficulties in establishing universally‐accepted definitions of the FM function and its management process continue to confound the identification and application of a generic set of performance parameters. This paper describes the process of developing a management‐by‐variance tool for monitoring the performance of the FM function of a major financial services company. The dual problems of the absence of a standardised set of key performance indicators (KPIs) and the lack of existing data for performance evaluation were addressed using a Delphi group. The principle of management‐by‐variance is based on the monitoring and analysis of performance trends, which is done by monitoring changes in performance using a bespoke (rather than generalised) set of performance indicators. This paper describes the process of creating the pilot version of a management‐by‐variance tool in sufficient detail to allow the process to be replicated to create other sets of bespoke KPIs. The process and outcomes of the exercise to short‐list, rank, and weight a finalised list of 23 KPIs are discussed. The KPIs are analysed in the context of the method of their selection, prioritisation and weighting for their intended custom application.