Pfizer extends facility management contract with CBRE
The multinational pharma firm selected CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) in 2009 in order to provide facility management services to ten of its European offices, but this latest extension will see CBRE delivering a range of services to Pfizer’s corporate offices and R&D facilities in 55 countries across the EMEA region.
According to CBRE’s Head of Facilities Management for EMEA Peter Jones, the company has been contracted to offer a wide range of facility services, from mechanical and electrical maintenance to soft services, such as running the mailroom, front of house, and catering.
“We provide facilities management expertise taking away the need for pharmaceutical companies to have their own estates management employees,” he told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
Furthermore, he added, the firm can help cut costs by improving “clients’ real estate footprints using space optimisation and management,” as well as providing a consistent facility management approach across geographical borders.
“Additionally,” he continued, “a significant source of strength is our wider property management expertise in estate management, such as lease administration, transaction management, property brokerage and other strategic property services.”
CBRE did not disclose how many more Pfizer plants it will manage as a result of the deal, but it did say it will increase the total surface area that it looks after on the Big Pharma firm's behalf to 270,000m2.
Streamlining?
The $68bn (€48bn) mega-merger with Wyeth in January 2009 led to a degree of over-capacity in the company’s network and - along with a general industry need to reduce production costs - by the end of the year the firm announced it was shuttering six R&D sites in the US and UK, reducing its global capacity by over a third.
Pfizer first partnered with CBRE six months after the merger and at the time Head of Corporate Services Europe at CBRE Matthew Pullen said the firm was brought in to “drive down costs and streamline operating processes.”
Jones did not comment on whether the extended contract would see any reduction to Pfizer’s network but did tell us CBRE would provide “project management, benchmarking and data utilisation as part of [its] services over the preceding contract.”
