August 2001
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Delphi Question: Custodial Services Revisited
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Delphi Question #477 (received 23 May):
I'm writing because a question published in the
May 2001
issue of Staff Notes Monthly
appeared to be unaddressed in the official response. The
questioner wrote, "How much do we really save by contracting out
custodial services? Please factor in the cost of 'managing' the
contractor, as we've had to do rather extensively all along and
propose to do even more now."
I thought the question was very clear. But the official response
failed to answer it.
Surely, someone in this organization quantified the difference
between the old in-house custodial costs (adjusted for inflation)
and those associated with the contracted service. Otherwise, the
decision to eliminate the former for the latter would never have
been made. I would appreciate it if our organization provided a
more complete and appropriate response to Delphi Question
#469.
Response (29 June):
As reflected in our earlier answer, a cursory analysis shows that
the dollar savings and efficiencies gained by using contracted
services are considerable, including the UCAR management overhead.
It is difficult to assign specific dollar and efficiency savings,
given that the space occupied has grown significantly and,
therefore, the work for the custodial staff has also. Turnover in
this function is high, so we would also have to estimate the cost
of hiring and training personnel, a cost now borne by the
contractor. Given that a detailed analysis would be difficult and
definitely not cost effective, we stand by our decision to
contract out custodial services.
—Katy Schmoll, vice president
Finance and Administration
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Questions and suggestions from the staff to management may be
submitted in confidence to the coordinator, Janet Evans (ext.
1114, ML room 517). They should be submitted in written form,
preferably via interoffice mail in a sealed envelope marked
confidential; they must be signed. Detailed procedures for
submitting questions are given in the
UCAR Policies and Procedures Manual, section 4-1-2.
Questions and answers of general interest to staff are submitted
to Staff Notes Monthly by Janet. They may be edited for
publication. For more information, including links to questions
and answers published in Staff Notes Monthly and a log of
all questions submitted since 1995, see the
Delphi Service Web page.
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In this issue... •
Other issues of Staff Notes Monthly
UCAR •
NCAR •
UOP
Edited by David Hosansky,
hosansky@ucar.edu
Prepared for the Web by Jacque Marshall
Last revised: Wed Aug 8 15:59:34 MDT 2001