Visitors to the CFM Pavillion at last week's World Workplace event in Glasgow gained an insight into the massive BT facilities outsourcing initiative, Project Jaguar. The small presentation room was filled to capacity as David Steventon, Director of Reliance Integrated Services, set out the scope of the project and the consortium's solution.

Project Jaguar covers 743,000 sq m (8m sq ft) across 8,500 facilities supporting 120,000 people. Facilities are managed and operated by 4,500 staff with an annual budget of £300m. The Jaguar contract, won by a consortium of Carillion, Reliance and Haden, excludes BT Cellnet, BT Networks and the current FM Solutions operation. Contract value is in excess of £500m.

BT purchased some services at below market price, said Steventon, explaining the background to Jaguar: "It was clear that they couldn't go on pushing the suppliers and needed to harness the supply chain. We were looking to eliminate the 'master/servant' relationship which doesn't serve either side well."

Under Jaguar there will be eight regional service providers (RSPs) and an enabling body. The RSPs will be special purpose vehicles set up by the three consortium companies and the 'enabling body', part of BT. The areas for the RSPs have been allocated to provide enough revenue in each region to support a stand-alone company. Carillion will have 51% of the equity in the SPVs, the other two consortium members 19.5% each and the enabling body will hold the remaining 10%.

BT operated vertical, national contracts. Under Jaguar these will be replaced by 'horizontal, multi-task work bands'. According to Steventon, this approach will allow more efficient servicing of small, remote sites. The new structure will see a reduction in management, output-based specification and a directly employed workforce.

In preparation for launch in January next year, the consortium partners are shadowing the existing operation in the RSP1 region through to the autumn.

Looking to the future, David Steventon set out his vision for the future of Project Jaguar which extends the current 'co-sourcing' approach to Total Infrastructure Management.

Richard Byatt