Yardstick™ is a proven international parks benchmarking initiative established in 2001 in New Zealand by local authority park managers, and introduced into Australia in 2005. There are now 37 Australian members participating in Yardstick, which is endorsed and operated by the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia (IPWEA), in partnership with the New Zealand Recreation Association.

The project involves park agencies (generally local authorities) subscribing to the project and participating in the annual survey.

The information collected covers:
• levels of service
• financial information
• best practice
• asset management, and
• policy and planning

This information can then be used for assisting with a wide range of purposes e.g. levels of service reviews, developing key performance indicators, measuring key result areas, policy and strategy development and review, cost estimating, contract or SLA unit price negotiation, improvement programming, factual support for seeking resources etc.

The project is governed by the NZ Recreation Association, and was established with financial assistance from the (NZ) National Asset Management Steering Group and SPARC (Sport and Recreation New Zealand).

• Policy and Planning
• Key Performance Indicators
• Playgrounds
• Grass
• Furniture/Fencing
• Signs
• Roads and Carparks

A set of 20 "key" performance indicators which represent the core best practise for the delivery and management of parks services are now included in the annual parks survey. These questions are designed to cover the key aspects of parks provision and management tasks to provide an assessment tool to measure overall performance of your organisations parks service. These KPI's can also be used directly as part of your own organisations reporting requirements. KPI's developed and measured annually by an independent organisation have clear benefits against the traditional approach of in-house measurement.

Individual analysis reports are available upon request. They are intended to provide a more in depth look at how your organisation is tracking against the other members of the project (total sample) and also a selected group of similar sized or neighbouring organisations (demographic group).

The content of these reports include:

• Methodology.
• The strengths and weaknesses of you organisation compared to other organisations.
• Recommended courses of action for each weakness identified.
• Detailed analysis of your organizations results compared to both the demographic group and total sample.

The information contained in the individual Yardstick analysis report is suitable for inclusion in asset and activity management plans, and is particularly useful for driving an improvement programme.

For further information contact Yardstick project managers jayson@yardstickglobal.org or brian@yardstickglobal.org.

Judge's statement:
"This award recognises significant research/planning of value to the parks and recreation industry undertaken in the last two years by an organisation or individual. Yardstick was developed by the industry for the industry in 2000/01 to identify what levels of service exist for varying activities in the parks industry. The Judges agreed that Yardstick has gained strong industry acceptance and is providing useful planning and research information to its members. Well-planned and researched, Yardstick will continue to grow."