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Why Canadians are choosing IPWEA Yardstick tools

By intouch * posted 20-02-2018 13:08

  

The Canadian city of Burlington, Ontario is using the Australasian-designed Yardstick benchmarking and survey system to drive their parks improvement.

Participating in both the benchmarking program and the park user surveys, they have effectively used these results to identify issues and build a case for increased funding to improve their underperforming services.

Screen_Shot_2018-02-20_at_1_04_12_PM.pngThe park user intercept survey was undertaken in the summer of 2017 and identified the following key results.

The top five items in order of importance were: 

  1. Sense of safety 
  2. Cleanliness 
  3. Recycling and waste bin 
  4. Biodiversity 
  5. Shade
By comparing importance and satisfaction of various park features and services they were able to identify their gaps in service performance.

The biggest gaps between user experience and expectations were: 

  1. Recycling and waste bins 
  2. Park lighting 
  3. Biodiversity
The survey also asked park users “If there was one change you could make what would it be?”

Common responses included:
  • Water fountain/bottle fill
  • Splash pad
  • More lighting
  • Recycling bins
  • More benches
  • Washroom (public toilet improvement)
The benchmarking information was used to support increasing budget levels to improve the quality of their sports field surfaces and obtain additional funding to improve their public toilets.
The council said: “We were getting constant complaints about our sport fields and delegations regarding the City of Burlington’s sport fields rates and fees. Because we had the data comparison from Yardstick, we could clearly identify that we were underfunded in this area. As a result, the council approved an additional $200K budget item for further preventative maintenance in the sport fields.We are also using Yardstick data to support a report to the committee where we are asking for a $600K on-going operating investment.At the same budget discussions, the council also approved the additional operating budget of $80,000 for public washrooms (trailer washrooms) at two of our larger waterfront parks. Again, staff could turn to Yardstick to point out that we do not have a Public Toilet Strategy where many others do. It was also supported by evidence from Yardstick surveys identifying the importance of washrooms and current satisfaction gap, plus the comparative level of funding and cost of maintenance of washrooms.”
There are now approximately 25 Canadian parks organisations participating in the Yardstick program, in addition to more than 35 in Australia and 27 in New Zealand. While most members like to compare themselves with local organisations, one of the things we have found from operating the Yardstick system is that regardless of your country or the population your organisation serves, the challenges we face as parks managers are remarkably similar.

While the application of parks management good practice principles are universal, the value of sharing information and learning from others, to improve the management of our parks should not be underestimated.

For information on joining the IPWEA Yardstick program please go to yardstickglobal.org or contact admin@ipwea.org
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