‘This was truly a team effort’: thoughts on the NEC4 Facilities Management Contract by those who helped create it

News

Tuesday 22 June saw the launch of the NEC4 Facilities Management Contract (FMC) following years of collaboration, consultations, meetings, poring over documents and tons of correspondence.

You can find out more about the FMC and the exclusive IWFM member discount of up to 15% by clicking here. Before you read that, though, we wanted to share some comments from a few of the people who helped to make the FM-specific contract suite possible.

The engineers of the FMC were IWFM, NEC and IWFM’s expert Steering Group, which was made up of members of our Procurement and International Special Interest Groups (SIG). To acknowledge the Steering Group’s instrumental role, we asked some of its members to share their thoughts on the launch.

Andy Candelent, Steering Group, ISIG, Midlands Region and Manufacturing Working Group member

‘The NEC4 FMC represents the culmination of around four years of hard work by a number of IWFM volunteers and staff. 

‘On behalf of IWFM's International SIG, I founded a small working group in early 2017 to work on the request from an FM Leaders' Forum for a contract for international use. It soon became apparent that there was in fact no standard form of contract available within the FM industry which was truly fit for purpose as most were loosely re-worded construction contracts. 

‘The working group recommended that IWFM collaborate with a contract specialist like NEC and I have since been part of the IWFM Steering Group, which has seen the project through from early discussions with NEC to the suite of contract documents which was launched this week. I am very proud to have represented IWFM at each stage of this project and to have been instrumental in delivering a product which should deliver tangible benefits for the wider FM sector.’

Anne Kinder, Steering Group member and Procurement SIG Chair, said:

‘A little over two years ago I was asked to support the development of the NEC4 contract and I was aware that a huge amount of work had been carried out by the IWFM International SIG and the IWFM team to get us to the stage of starting to draft the contract. We had an intense few months of drafting and debate; as you can imagine, we really got into the detail.  

‘I was so proud to present an update of the project with Ross Hayes at the NEC conference in 2019 and share the potential benefits of the new contract. I spoke about the efficiency gains that could be made by having a single form of contract across our sector and how contract management could be improved through use of the NEC4 contract rather than the extensive use of bespoke, client-initiated contracts.

‘So how do I feel about the launch? Pretty excited, I must say; however, this is just the start – we will need to focus on promoting the contract within our sector and do that over many years. The Procurement SIG is already thinking of how we can support this promotion, but for now it’s great to be celebrating the launch.’

Chris Jeffers, Steering Group, Procurement SIG and Home Counties Region member, said:

‘I am really excited about the launch of the new NEC4 Facilities Management contract and very proud to have been a Steering Group member. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the group, sharing ideas, expertise and best practice, and I would like to thank them for their hard work, dedication and good humour. I know all volunteers involved have put in a significant amount of time and effort to get this into the best position it can be. This will be the first contract focused on FM that has been launched for many years – something I believe the industry sorely needs. Thank you also to Sofie Hooper, Phil Jenkins and the rest of the IWFM team for their perseverance, dedication and interaction with NEC – this was truly a team effort.’

Thank you to everyone who made the FMC a reality. To quote IWFM Chief Executive Linda Hausmanis, ‘As we all now look to build back better post-pandemic, this contract could not have arrived at a better time.’