Equitix Management Services

We undertook two separate exercises to meet the brief. 

For the first, on a sample set of PFI Projects on which EMS were engaged, we assessed the Project by reference to the Curshaw Maturity Assessment. This is a question set covering the key aspects of PFI Project operational performance. It was completed for each Project via an interview between a Curshaw consultant and the Project’s General Manager (an EMS employee). It assesses Projects in their operational phase against an industry best practice standard (‘the Curshaw Operational Standard’), and has been tried and tested on a significant volume of UK PFI projects. 

We conducted spot-checks of the availability and suitability of evidence to substantiate a random sample of the questions, to test how readily EMS could evidence their compliance with certain aspects of industry best practice, and contractual compliance. A cross-comparison of evidence was also completed, to assure the level of consistency in how obligations are met and compliance demonstrated. 

We then produced a report covering both thematic and Project-specific findings, an individual completed Assessment for each Project, as well as PowerBI dashboard that enabled interactive cross-comparison of the findings on each Project. 

For the second, we undertook a deep dive review of an EMS-managed Project, using our proprietary process and accompanying tool, which assesses a Project’s operational performance across more than 300 separate lines of enquiry. It uses a proprietary set of logic-based rules to present all the findings on a single page, in the form of a straightforward dashboard. 

To do this, we first conducted a review of:

• All contractual documentation, including both the Project Agreement and sub-contracting arrangements;

• 12 months worth of monthly performance reporting;

• All recent technical reports;

• Key financial information; and

• Contractually required submissions to the Contracting Authority, including lifecycle plans and Facilities Management providers’ Quality Plans. 
  

Once this was complete, we met key stakeholders, to interview them and request additional evidence as required. Both these components allowed immediate identification of any required or recommended areas for improvement. 

From these findings, we created an Action Plan to accompany the dashboard, allocating actions across all stakeholders to the Project, using our bespoke format to explain:

• The action; 

• Why it is important;

• The owner responsible for completing the action;

• An estimate of the level of effort required to complete;

• The level of impact completion of the action would have; and

• The priority order of the action.
  

We then presented the Action Plan back to stakeholders, together with guidance on embedding the Action Plan into ‘business-as-usual’ governance to ensure progress was monitored and tracked.