MOD standardises estates management with new performance tool

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has announced it is to deploy new business intelligence (BI) and reporting software to improve the management of its estates.

Defence Estates (DE), part of the MOD is responsible for over 65,000 land and building assets covering some 593,053 acres of land, which is equivalent to 1one per cent of the total UK land mass.

DE is installing specialist vendor Actuate's Performancesoft Views as its estate performance measurement system (EPMS) to standardise data sharing and improve performance measurement, including demonstrating value for money and ensuring that the estate is managed and developed in a sustainable manner, in line with government policy.

The department began work to identify a performance measurement and reporting tool that could display estate performance by drawing on data held in various 'expert' systems earlier this year.

Tim Rayson, head of the performance reporting and change management team for Defence Estates, said: "We knew that whatever system we chose, it needed to be robust, with intuitive user interfaces and extensive functionality."

EPMS has also received the backing of the National Audit Office, the Office of Government Commerce and HM Treasury.

Using Views' automation capabilities, the EPMS will collect several million data points drawn from a variety of sources including existing "expert" systems. And the system will be further developed and deployed to include other initiatives to provide a coherent view of estate performance in future.

The Views-based EPMS will also provide a unified set of metrics for measuring Prime Contractor performance that will, in turn, be allied to a single condition survey methodology with a direct link into DE's integrated estate management plans (IEMPs) for estate assets.

Miya Knights

A 25-year veteran enterprise technology expert, Miya Knights applies her deep understanding of technology gained through her journalism career to both her role as a consultant and as director at Retail Technology Magazine, which she helped shape over the past 17 years. Miya was educated at Oxford University, earning a master’s degree in English.

Her role as a journalist has seen her write for many of the leading technology publishers in the UK such as ITPro, TechWeekEurope, CIO UK, Computer Weekly, and also a number of national newspapers including The Times, Independent, and Financial Times.