Infrastructure agencies recognise ICMS-based data-sharing as key to international cost benchmarking

Will Myles (wrmyles.ch@gmail.com), 3 years ago in Thought leadership

ICMSCosts was privileged to join the ICMS Coalition for a recent round table series on global cost and carbon reporting. The ICMS Coalition comprises 49 organisations from around the world committed to the creation and implementation of one shared standard for life-cycle reporting of cost and carbon in the built asset industry (real estate and infrastructure assets).

The series brought together government representation from around the world, including officials from Australia, Canada, China, Estonia, the European Union, Ireland, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The key takeaway from the series was that to save taxpayer money through performance benchmarking, governments need to share and compare data with their peers, for mutual benefit.

Other observations include:

Demonstrating value-for-money with ICMS – ICMS is an important building block in creating an organisation which can demonstrate value-for-money in the delivery of major capital programs. By adopting the standard, clients are taking a step towards being able to benchmark project cost and carbon performance in real estate and infrastructure.
Creating standardised data – ICMS generates standardised data – so performance from similar projects / similar assets can be benchmarked – locally, nationally and internationally.
Using your own data better – organisations can start with internal benchmarking and get the most out of in-house data – plenty of “actuals” can be found internally. The question is often what the “baseline” should be – learning organisations will move, over time, towards external benchmarking.
Making data accessible to others – to be valuable, and to learn from others, data needs to be mutually accessible with others seeking to benchmark. This lends itself to centralised storage (or equivalent technology) with a trusted custodian, independent of the supply chain, with relevant data protections in place.
Being clear on why you’re benchmarking – what organisations really value is shown by what they measure – it’s important that those interpreting the data understand the context to avoid the pitfalls of “well, they did it for USDXm … so that’s our budget for our one”. Benchmarking is not an alternative to professional opinion – it provides better information to the professional.
Performance management is a culture shift – adopting ICMS and sharing data with similar organisations requires a culture shift – leadership support is key to success.
At what price, benchmarking – there’s a need for a “free open data structure” for benchmarking – the costs and benefits of benchmarking should be transparent.
Carbon accounting is coming – the focus on cost is universal, but the focus on carbon varies across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australasia. Carbon accounting is coming – we are moving towards a cost budget and a carbon budget. ICMS 3 – out in 2021 – will help by providing the international reporting structure for carbon. There was a sense that “we should capture carbon data now, because we know we’ll need it at some point”.
Role models are available – many organisations are already well along the learning curve of adopting ICMS-based benchmarking of project performance. External benchmarking is a bold step, but it’s been done before by others across many industries – including construction.

ICMSCosts brings together industry professionals who know this problem all too well, and who are passionate in creating the right platform and environment for data sharing to take place.

ICMSCosts is creating a global, independent database of project life-cycle costs for real estate and infrastructure. Our aim is to support client organisations with better data – enabling better decision-making and ultimately saving tax-payer or shareholder money.

If you have major capital programs and are looking to save stakeholder money by enabling better access to better data, drop us a note at info@icmscosts.com.