Term Hard Facility Management Contract Procurement

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a Non Departmental Public Body (NDPB), a registered Scottish Charity, which wholly owns a subsidiary Company, the Botanics Trading Company Ltd (BTC).  RBGE are one of Scotland’s National Collections and are regarded by our peers as one of the world’s leading Scientific Botanical Gardens. RBGE’s mission is ‘Exploring, Explaining and Conserving the World of Plants for a Better Future’.

RBGE are custodians of a wide range of buildings, which enables this client to deliver against its mission statement, including a number which have significant architectural interest.  In Edinburgh their Estate includes Victorian Palmhouses dating from the mid 1800’s and 1960’s Front Range, both category ‘A’ listed, along with the John Hope Gateway housing gallery and exhibition space, shops and restaurant.  At their smaller regional gardens, RBGE have equally important structures such as the recently restored Benmore Fernery and Dawyck Visitor’s Centre with their newer buildings taking advantage of renewable technology wherever feasible, including wind turbine and hydro-electric generation, solar PV and thermal panels as well as sedum roofs and rainwater harvesting.

The Edinburgh Garden has an in-house Maintenance Team which provides day to day care and maintenance of the built environment within the Edinburgh Garden.  However, combined with a lean Estates Team, the Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) regime and any Reactive Maintenance was undertaken by a broad range of specialist suppliers and sub-contractors resulting in loss of efficiency, economy of scale and additional management and coordination responsibilities falling on RBGE.

Atorus was commissioned to deliver, for RBGE, a Hard Facilities Management Services Framework contract.

The scope of FM Services supplied by the successful tenderer will apply to all four of RBGE’s sites – Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore and include:

• Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) for all plant and equipment assets and specific building fabric elements identified
• Reactive Maintenance
• Project Works

The key drivers for the project included:

• A single outsourced service provider (compared to multiple service contracts)
• Compliment to Soft FM Term Contract
• Economic advantage / value for RBGE based on projected £550,000 p.a. budget expenditure
• Enhanced service delivery and operational effectiveness
• Improved management and deployment of in-house resources
• Appropriate re-balancing of PPM and reactive maintenance

Engaging with RBGE and the Scottish Executive (Procurement Division) as the Technical Adviser / Project Manager, the planning, design, execution and delivery of an appropriately out-sourced Term Contract was undertaken providing for the solution to be activated by July 2016 on schedule and budget.

Atorus are engaged on an on-going basis to support the transition and development of the contract services.