Ready access to comprehensive, up-to-date information is crucial for both client and provider in a mechanical and electrical (M&E) outsourcing partnership. Lorne Stewart looks at the role played by information management systems in making this partnership a success.

• In what ways can companies profit by outsourcing their M&E maintenance?
• What are some necessary features of an M&E service provider's information management system?

In today's business environment, continuity of operation and focus on a business's core activity is increasingly important to most companies.

Therefore many choose to outsource the maintenance of their buildings to a professional team of people, either as a fully outsourced FM package, or as a range of bespoke bundled specialist services.

Mechanical and electrical (M&E) maintenance is one such service that is often subject to either of the above, but requires a specialist team who not only knows how to service the plant that keeps computers cool, but is also able to maintain non-critical environments across a whole variety of bespoke buildings that constitute clients' estate portfolios.

This trend is developing with a real move back to getting critical plant, equipment and buildings serviced by experts, who either support the main soft services FM team or deliver the services direct.

Most companies of significant size have large computer centres that hold critical data that are crucial to the smooth operation of their business and therefore need to be kept running without interruption.

By outsourcing their building maintenance to professional organisations, companies and FM providers ensure they also keep up-to-date with the latest technical and legal legislation, and keep abreast of the potentially hazardous emphasis placed on health and safety, leaving them free to concentrate on their core activities.

Environmental awareness and energy management these days is not only about the practical approach to reducing a building's carbon emissions but is also about providing energy management advice and dealing with environmental issues.

With fuel costs now rising as fast as environmental concerns, these topics are an increasingly high priority with many companies, a number of whom have publicly stated they want to be carbon neutral within the next 2-3 years, as part of their own social and corporate responsibility.

This therefore places significant demands on the M&E service businesses to provide a practical approach and the right advice that informs clients of the right kind of plant and equipment to help in terms of their energy management, non-intrusive maintenance techniques and a whole host of techniques that not only reduce costs but also reduce or eliminate carbon emissions in the future.

Managing a company's estate requires the M&E provider to have up-to-date information on all current equipment trends and the assets within a building, to ensure a cost-effective preventative maintenance programme is implemented and costly reactive callouts are minimised.

In turn an FM company may live or die on the quality of this data available to it. If it does not know what is going on, or is unaware of the exact assets and needs of its clients, it cannot properly manage those needs.

Therefore it is crucial that the M&E provider can demonstrate IT management systems and customer service centres that are available 24/7 all year-round to support the business and record requests for reactive work from any of its clients, to allow it to administer all task activities, and to manage effectively their network of mobile and static engineers.

As technology progresses, information management systems (IMS) have been developed by a number of M&E service providers to be completely customisable in order to meet each client's needs.

Many interface with internal and third party systems to capture service requests, action them, update related records (such as critical stock levels and purchase orders) and then close the requests when complete.

They are used exclusively to plan, mobilise and deliver the required services to a vast range of services across many companies' portfolio of buildings.

One such available system is Web-based to provide intranet access to authorised users, allowing them to see the overall situation and track the progress of particular jobs.

It interfaces with engineers' PDAs for remote access and input, and to the company's vehicle tracking system.

The IMS has comprehensive asset management, resource planning and provides a full audit trail and reporting data that is measured against key performance indicators (KPIs), ensuring they are in complete control of all aspects of the FM process.

Looking forward, the marketplace has got a lot of players in it, margins continue to get ever tighter, and clients have greater leverage than they used to have in terms of selecting their service provider as they have much greater clarity over the service providers available in the marketplace.

Service differentiators and the ability to add value are the key to stop price becoming the dominant factor.

Unless a client and service provider mutually select each other, there's a real danger that companies potentially bid for and win low-quality work, making it hard to service and therefore potentially ending up in a difficult relationship after a very short space of time, which in the long-term has no benefit to either service providers or client alike.