Item - 2016.AU6.9

City Council considered Items AU6.9 and AU6.10 together.

The Audit Committee recommends that:

1.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to ensure all current cleaning routines, as well as any future adjustments to cleaning routines, are benchmarked with industry standard cleaning times.

2.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to develop the corporate procedure to ensure compliance for measuring and establishing the cleanable area for a City facility.

3.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to validate the available measurements in accordance with the established corporate procedure.

4.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to:

a.  Implement a process to ensure that a complete and accurate inventory of City facilities receiving custodial services is centrally maintained. 

b.  Ensure the centralized data source includes all relevant information, including labour costs, to effectively monitor performance of custodial services and support operating decisions made by executive management as well as operational managers and supervisors.

c.  Establish a protocol for ensuring data is kept accurate and up-to-date for each City facility.

5.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to effectively workload each City facility receiving cleaning services, either in-house or contracted.  Such undertaking to include actions to:

a.  ensure accurate operational data is available

b.  workload each facility by applying current industry standard cleaning times and tasks

c.  schedule the cleaning workforce in accordance with the estimated workload.

6.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to assess and define the level of cleanliness that can be associated with each level of cleaning service in the Custodial Standard Service Model.

7.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to ensure each client group is provided with information about the cleaning service level they are receiving relative to the Custodial Standard Service Model and the associated costs of services provided.  Such information be used to examine the opportunities to achieve more economical cleaning services.

8.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to ensure that appropriate operational planning for cleaning services is performed to ensure workloads are based on a reasonable estimation of the productive labour hours of the workforce.

9.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to identify, monitor, and report on key performance metrics on a regular basis relative to internal and external benchmarks for the purposes of regularly assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of cleaning services.

10.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to implement a program of quality assurance inspections of cleaning services to be deployed across the City and adopted consistently by the Facilities Management Division.

11.   City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management take appropriate action to control for the risk of bias in completing quality assurance inspections.

12.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to plan, implement and incorporate the results of customer satisfaction surveys to improve custodial services delivery.

13.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to collaborate with the Executive Director of Human Resources to ensure that vulnerable sector screening is adequately addressed for all City staff who provide services in high risk facilities, such as daycares.

14.  City Council request the City Manager to request Division Heads and Chief Executive Officers of City agencies and corporations to review the issues and recommendations included in this report and consider the relevance to their respective custodial operations.

15.  City Council request the General Manager, Facilities Management to explore opportunities to move to a daytime cleaning routine, including a pilot project, where feasible.

The Audit Committee considered the following Items together:

- AU6.9, headed "Audit of City Cleaning Services - Part 1: Opportunities to Control Costs, Improve Productivity and Enhance Quality of Cleaning Services"; and

- AU6.10, headed "Audit of City Cleaning Services - Part 2: Maximizing Value from Cleaning Contracts".

Beverly Romeo-Beehler, Auditor General, and Ina Chan, Assistant Auditor General, gave a presentation to the Audit Committee on these Items.

This report presents the results of the audit of custodial services provided by the Facilities Management Division.  The objective of this audit was to assess whether these services are effective, efficient and economical.

The audit results are presented in two separate reports:

·       Part 1, the management of overall cleaning services provided by Facilities Management, is contained in this report.

·       Part 2, the procurement and administration of cleaning services obtained under contract, is contained in a separate report entitled Maximizing Value from Cleaning Contracts

This report includes 14 recommendations.  The recommendations, in three main areas as follows, provide a roadmap for strengthening existing processes and should be implemented immediately:

·       Better data is needed to control costs and demonstrate value for money

·       Standardizing cleaning routines may help to contain costs

·       Monitoring performance will improve productivity, control costs and enhance quality.

Many of the issues and recommendations included in this report will also have relevance to other City divisions, agencies and corporations which oversee their custodial services independently of Facilities Management.

The recommendations are also particularly relevant as the City considers a City-wide real estate strategy.  Policy, process, and internal control improvements that result from implementing the recommendations can be leveraged across the City.  By strengthening Facilities Management, a strong foundation is established, should the City decide to move towards a more centralized City-wide service delivery model.