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. Yardstick was launched internationally at the 2007 International Federation of Parks and Recreation Administrators World Congress in Dublin.

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 service level agreement unit price negotiation, improvement programming, factual support for seeking resources etc.

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

• Key Performance Indicators
• Provision, Investment & Efficiency
• Operational Excellence
• Asset Management
• Strategic Planning
• Environmental Sustainability
• Social Benefits/Outcomes

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.