Charlie Bolam
The first in a new series uncovering the hidden truths of property management procurement.
If you're facing growing workloads, increasing performance expectations and an outsourced property management portfolio that seems impenetrable, you're not alone. This is the first in a series of articles aimed at helping you regain control of property management procurement, beginning with a closer look at the power and influence of the incumbent manager.
Most Property Management tenders are decided before an RFP (Request for Proposal) is even sent. It's rarely malicious. It's more likely an asset manager with a good working relationship with the incumbent's regional director, or an owner who was impressed by one bidder's presentation three years ago and never quite let go of it. The risk here is that tender documentation gets built around that instinct without anyone admitting, or even realising, it's there.
This changes what "good procurement" actually means. A tender should not be a test of who can write the best proposal. It's a mechanism for surfacing information the client doesn't already have about cost structure, about how a provider handles a difficult mixed-use scheme, about what happens when a fire safety issue lands on a Friday afternoon. If the outcome is fixed before the questions are asked, you haven't run a tender, you've run a coronation with paperwork.
The fix isn't to be cynical about incumbents - often they win for good reason, and re-appointing a strong performer is a perfectly legitimate outcome. The fix is separating the scoping conversation from the evaluation conversation. Before drafting evaluation criterion, spend the time upfront understanding what's actually driving the review: is it cost, is it service failure, is it a portfolio restructuring, is it simply governance requiring market testing every three years? Each of those points to a different weighting, a different set of reference calls, sometimes a different pool of bidders entirely.
If you find yourself running a procurement exercise to satisfy a board requirement for "market testing" while the operational team has no real appetite for change, bidders sense it. Good property management firms are not naive and can tell within the first site walk whether they're genuinely in contention or filling out a headcount for governance purposes. That's an expensive, reputationally awkward way to find out you weren't serious about the process.
Running procurement well means being honest, internally, about what you're actually trying to learn before you ask the market to tell you. Everything else is just structure around that honesty.
To discuss the best way to approach your next procurement project, speak to Charlie Bolam.