What do members say?
• Asset Management Gap Analysis
• Reserves Strategy and Activity Management Plans
• Best Practice
• KPI's and Resource Assessment
• Presentations to Councillors

"Yardstick has provided useful information to enable a gap analysis to be carried out of our asset management procedures and activity management plan. This analysis was then used to produce an improvement plan and justify necessary resourcing requirements."

- Bill Steans, Parks and Recreation Manager, Timaru District Council, New Zealand.

“Yardstick data has been incorporated into two of our strategic documents – our Reserves Strategy, and our Activity Management Plans. In both documents Yardstick was used to provide comparisons on provision, and to illustrate areas where there was a shortfall/over- supply of reserves. In the Activity Management Plans, Yardstick data was also used to develop key performance indicators, to assist in analysing future capital requirements, and to identify gaps or shortfalls in our operation, which in turn populated our improvement programme.”

– Jan-Maree Atkinson, Urban Parks Officer, Waitaki District Council, New Zealand.

"Yardstick information enabled Parks Conservation and Lands to show that it was striving for “best practice” when the Government's agency for Procurement Solutions within the Department of Treasury commissioned the ACT Planning and Land Authority's City Maintenance Audit Project. This audit was to identify where and how Parks Conservation and Lands was both meeting and striving for “best practice”. As part of this audit we were required to identify if and how we had compared our organisation against similar organisations. Yardstick not only provides a tool for this purpose but the element of independence it offers, and now significant membership, provides real benchmark information in an open report. Canberra was one of the first members in Australia and are pleased to see the project growing quickly now in our country.”

- Ian Baird, Senior Policy Officer, Sustainable Policy and Programs, Environment and Recreation, Dept. of Territory and Municipal Services, Canberra Australia.

“We have incorporated some of the high level measures found in Yardstick into our three activity management plans. So, for instance, one of the KPI’s we use and measure ourselves against is our units operational cost per 1,000 residents, compared to Yardsticks total sample, and a demographic group of eight other similar sized councils that we compare ourselves against. We also used Yardstick to help us assign some of our asset lives, and it assisted us greatly in an internal review of staff resources in the department. In this respect it clearly identified that we were greatly under resourced when compared to similar sized organisations, as well as many of the smaller participating organisations.”

- Tony Billing, Parks & Reserves Manager, Napier City Council, New Zealand.

"Gore District Council have conducted two strategic reviews by elected member working parties, one for Aquatic Services and the other for Parks and Reserves. As in any such exercise with elected members and laymen it is often extremely difficult to convey certain information so it can be placed in the appropriate context that it was intended. Yardstick has been the underpinning factor in providing information for me for both of these working parties. Yardstick provides a large volume of relevant and current information in an easily read format. You can also use the data to formulate justifiable and valid discussion points on almost any topic relating to either the operational or provision aspects of the business. I am convinced that Yardstick is a great tool, and a necessity for anyone managing recreational assets."

- Ian Soper, Parks and Recreation Manager, Gore District Council, New Zealand.