A portfolio percentage can be accurate and still be an inadequate basis for an operating decision. I learned that through a cleaning reduction I supported in 2008. Vacant area in four buildings had risen from twelve to twenty-eight per cent. The change was real, and it was reasonable to examine whether the service scope should change with it. My mistake was to let the area measure do too much of the reasoning before we had examined the pattern of work that remained.
I supported reducing an annual A$360,000 routine cleaning scope by A$90,000. A property colleague warned that the remaining occupiers continued to use the entrances, lifts and shared facilities. I did not give that account enough weight. The proposal seemed proportionate when viewed through occupied area, but the building was not a collection of independent square metres. People still moved through common places whose use did not decline in the same way as the leased floors.
The percentage was true and the inference was incomplete
There was no need to deny the vacancy figure to question the service recommendation. The figure described an important commercial condition. It did not specify which tasks had disappeared, which had reduced and which continued at much the same level. Those were operating questions requiring a different account. By moving too quickly from area to scope, I treated a useful starting measure as though it already contained the answer to each of them.
A communal entrance illustrates the distinction without establishing a universal cleaning standard. Fewer occupied floors may alter how many people arrive, when they arrive and which facilities they use. It does not necessarily remove the task associated with the entrance itself. The right response depends on actual use, the agreed service and the requirements applying to that property. I should have asked colleagues to explain those conditions before recommending a numerical reduction that appeared to follow naturally from the portfolio report.
This is not a defence of preserving every existing contract or task whenever someone can describe a local difference. An operating organisation needs to be able to change its arrangements as a building changes. Vacant areas can create legitimate opportunities to revise work. The challenge is to identify the work specifically enough that the institution understands what it is withdrawing and what remains. A local explanation should be examined, not accepted automatically; equally, a central percentage should not silence it merely because it is easier to compare across buildings.
I also learned something about how a recommendation gains authority. Once the reduction entered the financial plan, the underlying assumption became harder to reopen. Colleagues began discussing delivery of the lower scope rather than whether the proposed scope matched the building. The earlier choice had acquired the status of a commitment. That made it especially important for me to acknowledge my part in the reasoning when the resulting service did not fit the use we observed. It would have been unfair to describe the problem solely as a team’s failure to deliver an already adequate plan.
Restoring work without rewriting the earlier decision
We reviewed the communal tasks with the responsible teams and restored part of the service. The correction incurred A$72,000 in additional expense over the following six months. I retained that expense in the account of the original choice. It was not a new unrelated demand that happened to arise after a successful reduction. The operating observation had shown that my recommendation was incomplete, and the institution paid to revise it.
The periods matter. The A$90,000 reduction was expressed against an annual scope, while the A$72,000 restoration expense covered the following six months. Subtracting the latter from the former would not demonstrate an annual saving. The tasks and timing were not interchangeable. A persuasive recovery story could easily have used that arithmetic to preserve a positive headline, but it would have made the account harder for another operator or director to understand. I preferred to explain the two decisions and their actual bases separately.
Restoration also required its own judgement. We did not simply return every task to its former arrangement because the first reduction had been wrong. The revised scope distinguished vacant-area work from continuing communal needs and respected the relevant contracts and employment arrangements. Technical or hygiene requirements were not available for me to waive in pursuit of a budget number. The correction needed to be as specific as the original proposal should have been, including the parts of the lower scope that remained appropriate.
There was a credibility cost as well as a financial one. Colleagues had supported my recommendation, and some expected the lower expense to continue. I needed to explain why the observed building use changed the decision without suggesting that the original evidence had always been clear to me. The property colleague’s earlier challenge was part of that explanation. A senior leader’s account should leave room for another person having seen an important condition sooner. Otherwise the lesson becomes an exercise in protecting the narrator rather than improving the institution’s next choice.
What a scope proposal should explain
I now want a proposed service change to connect the commercial condition with the actual task. If occupied area has fallen, which activities depend directly on that area? Which depend on the number or pattern of users? Which arise from a requirement that does not change with vacancy? These questions do not produce a universal formula. They make the proposal more examinable and help management see where further observation or specialist advice is required before it can reach a responsible conclusion.
The account should also identify how the institution will notice that the revised scope is not working as intended. That need not mean waiting for a large accumulation of complaints. The responsible teams can agree what experience or evidence would justify a review, while keeping the relevant service and technical obligations intact. A reduction becomes less credible when the only acceptable subsequent observation is confirmation that it succeeded. The ability to revise an assumption is part of responsible operation, even though a revision can have an inconvenient cost.
The lesson reaches beyond cleaning, but I resist turning it into a slogan that every portfolio average is misleading. Aggregation is necessary when an organisation manages many buildings. The problem is using an aggregate to answer a more specific question without examining the connection. I want a report that helps us move between the company’s commercial position and the conditions in the shared spaces. Vacant floors matter. So do the people still walking through the entrance, and the work we have agreed to perform around them.