Defence Estate Facilities Operations

The Defence Estate comprises the land, buildings and other facilities that Defence uses across Australia. These facilities are vital to achieving the Defence mission - to prevent or defeat the use of armed force against Australia and its interests. The Estate has a gross replacement value of $14.8 billion. Defence Estate Organisation's (DEO's) Facilities Operations (FACOPS) Program delivers general maintenance and minor new works to Defence facilities on a regional basis across the country. DEO's Estate Operations and Planning Branch and its nine Regional Estate Centres are responsible for the FACOPS Program. Resources available for the Program have been reduced in recent years. The total DEO budget for 2000-01, which includes funds for capital works, facilities operations and property management, is $2.6 billion. Of this total, the FACOPS Program has a cash allocation of $213 million and an additional $15.6 million for employee expenses associated with the Program's 283 staff. The objective of the audit was to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of selected Defence facilities operations, including tendering and contracting, with a view to adding value with practical recommendations for enhancing operations.

The Ministry of Defence, one of the largest landowners in the UK, has strengthened its estate planning and achieved significant receipts from disposal of property but the changes are not yet sufficient to drive value for money for the taxpayer rigorously. While the defence estate primarily exists to support defence capabilities, the Department has not matched its focus on operational needs with enough attention to efficient use of its estate assets and to reducing costs. This report acknowledges that, between 1998 and 2008, the MOD identified and took opportunities to rationalise that part of its UK estate not needed for training, generating £3.4 billion from the sale of surplus property. Nevertheless, over the same period the Department reduced the number of civilian and military personnel three times faster than it reduced its built estate. This raises a clear question about whether there are opportunities to reduce the estate further and secure cost savings and further disposal receipts. The NAO also concludes that the Department's process for categorising sites is rightly driven by operational requirements but it does not give sufficient weight to other factors such as how heavily a site is used, running costs, or potential income from sale. The MOD also lacks sufficient data centrally to conduct the necessary analysis to help it reduce costs in a structured way. This report identified five categories of information needed to identify the scope for further estate rationalisation: operational importance; utilisation; condition; potential value; and running costs.

The Committee's report on an evaluation of Whitehall departments' plans for structural change in response to the twin challenges of major public service reform and significantly reduced administrative budgets.The Committee expresses concern that the centre of Government, notably the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, is providing neither strategic leadership nor a governance framework to departments in managing their change programmes. The demand is immediate for an all encompassing strategic approach to change, minimising disaggregation and ensuring a 'joined up Government' approach."

This report notes mounting concern that UK Armed Forces may be falling below the minimum utility required to deliver the commitments that they are currently being tasked to carry out let alone the tasks they are likely to face between 2015 to 2020 when it is acknowledged that there will be capability gaps. The Committee is concerned that UK Armed Forces will be continually operating at the maximum level envisaged by the Defence Planning Assumptions. The Committee is not convinced that this aspiration can be achieved by co-operation with our allies given the challenges of aligning political with operational needs. The SDSR identified seven military tasks and the Defence Planning Assumptions that underpin them. However the Review fails to show how decisions such as those on the Aircraft Carriers and Nimrod MRA4 will lead to the Armed Forces being able to undertake those military tasks. The Committee has serious concerns over the realisation of what is called "Future Force 2020", the Government's intended shape of the Armed Forces from 2020, particularly as the provision of the necessary resources is only a Government aspiration, not Government policy. The MoD must reform, and ensure substantially improved transparency and control over, its finance and budgetary practices. When committing to undertake new operations the Government should state from the outset where that operation fits in the Defence Planning Assumptions and which of the military tasks it is meeting. The Committee is concerned that the Government seems to have postponed the sensible aspiration of bringing commitments and resources into line, in that it has taken on the new commitment of Libya while reducing the resources available to MoD.

This book has been published at regular intervals during the last 20 years, and the latest 2014 2015 addition is the one that deals with the most far reaching changes the UK Armed Forces have gone through for a generation. Although the UK's Armed Forces

In 1984 the first edition of the British Army Guide was published and in September 2015 the 13th edition will be on sale. This invaluable information resource which deals with all aspects of British Army organisation, recruitment and training has been extremely popular with service personnel, the defence industry, military libraries and other groups who are interested in the British Army worldwide. Copies can be seen on desks throughout the UK Ministry of Defence and it would be fair to say that almost every foreign defence attache in London has a copy in his briefcase.Chapters include a Defence Overview; Army Organisation; International Commitments; Armour, Infantry, Artillery, Army Aviation, Engineers, Communications and Combat Service Support; Units of the Army; Recruiting and Training; Reserve Forces plus a final Miscellaneous Chapter which deals with a number of items essential to understanding How the British Army functions on a daily basis. Lavishly illustrated throughout there is no comparable publication available on the market.