Our approach was based on a structured review and integration process to ensure an effective and compliant handback:

• Contract Review – we conducted a thorough assessment using Curshaw’s industry-leading Standards based methodology to identify key expiry requirements, risks, and dependencies.

• Integration of Existing FM Plans – we ensured alignment current Facilities Management (FM) plans with the handback strategy.

• Event Mapping & Enhancement – we identified and mapped additional key milestones, such as stakeholder workshops, risk assessments, and condition surveys, to build out the vital activities that are necessary conditions for delivering within contractually required timescales.

• Governance & Stakeholder Engagement – we established structured governance arrangements, including working groups, steering committees, and regular reporting to ensure alignment and accountability.

• Stakeholder Engagement & Workshop Delivery – we delivered a dedicated Expiry and Handback Workshop, bringing together key stakeholders to review progress, ensure all parties were in agreement on the shared vision for handback, what the critical success factors were e, increase awareness of central Government expiry and handback expectations, and to refine the plan.
  

The next stage of the engagement covered disputed failure events that were more subjective than those that were not agreed on the basis of differences in calculations. These covered areas such as: 

• helpdesk items that were claimed by the Project Company as requiring temporary repairs, which is a contractual mechanism that requires both parties to agree to where a permanent fix would not be possible within the contractually required timescales; and 

• cancelled jobs, where the Project Company did not calculate any SFPs or deduction because a job that was started was then cancelled, whereas the Trust claimed that required response times had been missed.
  

Curshaw undertook extensive analysis of the contract, and identified why these systemic disagreements were occurring. From this, we coordinated a workshop with Project Co, the Management Services Provider (MSP) and Facilities Management provider (FM Co), to help address these issues and enhance the transparency in Monthly Performance Monitoring Reports. For each disputed category, the workshop outlined the following:

1. An example of a Service Request being disputed under that category, as well as outlining the key themes arising from the comments made by the Trust, Project Co and FM Co.

2. Discuss the current methods and processes used by FM Co in reporting and calculating items in each specific category, as well as the potential recommendations as to how this can be improved to satisfy the Trust.

3. Confirm the approved method that will be incorporated into the guidance pack for the Trust, outlining clearly how the relevant category has been calculated and reported previously, and the steps being taken to improve the clarity of these events, such that the likelihood of the Trust rejecting Service Requests under this category is mitigated.

In addition, the workshop also helped facilitate discussions around the processes and governance of submitting Performance Monitoring Reports, and recommendations, such as adjusting reporting windows to allow more time for quality assurance were made.