Parks Yardstick

Yardstick Parks

Yardstick™ is a proven international parks benchmarking initiative established in 2001 in New Zealand by local authority park managers. 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 SLA unit price negotiation, improvement programming, factual support for seeking resources, and the like. Over half of all Councils in New Zealand are members of Yardstick and the membership also includes the Department of Conservation. The project is governed by the New Zealand Recreation Association, and was established with financial assistance from the National Asset Management Steering Group and SPARC (Sport and Recreation New Zealand).

Key Performance Indicators now available with Yardstick Parks

A set of 20 key performance indicators which represent the core best practise for the delivery and management of parks services are now included in the annual parks survey. These questions are designed to cover the key aspects of parks provision and management tasks to provide an assessment tool to measure overall performance of your organisation's parks service. These KPI's can also be used directly as part of your own organisation's reporting requirements. KPI's developed and measured annually by an independent organisation have clear benefits against the traditional approach of in-house measurement.

Individual Yardstick Analysis Reports

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 your organisation compared to other organisations
• Recommended courses of action for each weakness identified
• Detailed analysis of your organisation's 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 more information about Yardstick please contact Jayson Kelly, Yardstick Project Director on NZ +64  27 256 0041 or visit the website.