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The Government’s focus on using its office accommodation portfolio more efficiently includes setting a target of around 16m2 per full time equivalent (FTE) across the portfolio. A recent reports estimates this would save more than $43 million each year across the 33 agencies who participated in recent benchmarking exercise. This is one of the areas targeted in a newly issued report which is much more interesting than its title – Administrative and Support Services Benchmarking Report – would suggest.

We have carried out considerable work in this area over some years. Our latest report issued in 2010 recorded details of leases entered into between August 2008 and July 2010, and covered more than 410,000m² and 25,730 employees, a substantial piece of work. The chart to the right notes that in this brief recent period, Government is in fact doing pretty well, already getting 16.9m² per workstation (effectively the same as FTE) and costing less per work station than private sector leases entered into in the same period. The space is a little higher than IT, financial and legal consulting services, and somewhat higher than the overall national result of 15.9m² per work station, but not too far away. Given that the Government’s own data collection suggest that the current mean is 21m² per FTE there appear to be some fairly easy pickings to be had the next time a lease renewal comes around, or an opportunity to refit owned or leased offices.

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