Influences budgets
Parks
Innovation and better management of your parks is achieved through the sharing of knowledge and information. Park managers developed Yardstick for the industry as a benchmarking tool to collect, share and compare vital information to measure current performance and drive future improvements.
Yardstick provides tools to collect and compare both management and user information.
- The Benchmarks project reports on a wide range of information to identify asset provision, costs, service delivery, strategic planning and asset management best practice.
- The Survey project identifies what is important to your user and how well you are meeting their expectations – it effectively measures the levels of service you are delivering, and identifies your service level gaps.

Benchmarks
- Identify, plan and improve your strategic goals and direction
- Record your operation costs against a variety of criteria
- Undertake financial performance reviews and cost estimating
- Cost/benefit analysis with accurate and up to date information
- Lobby for additional resources.
- Drive asset management implementation and improvements
- Evaluate your systems and performance
- Develop parks strategies and levels of service
- Inform service delivery reviews
- Compare locally, nationally and internationally
- Prioritise areas for improvement
- Thoroughly understand your business, and the strengths and weaknesses of your operation.
Survey
- Identify your park users community profile
- Defines and reviews your levels of service based on accurate and reliable user research
- Reliably reports on service performance based on industry benchmarks
- Prioritise improvements and development programmes
- Three research options in one project to capture the views of your park visitors:
- Intercept survey of park users
- Online self completion survey
- Door to door survey
- Record user expectations and satisfaction to measure the gaps in levels of service.
- Include your own specific questions to address specific issues
- A network of organisations and professionals learning and improving from shared informations and common experience.
How it works
Benchmarks
User Surveys
Contact us for more information on pricing and subscriptions
Make an enquiryKey Benefits
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moneybag -
piechart Assists in prioritising allocation of financial resources
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check Provides factual information that drives asset management and sustainable financial planning
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activity Helps set, monitor, and manage performance measures
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approve Is an unbiased, Independent assessment
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users Assists in justifying additional resources
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search Provides a research base for information on parks and open space provision, cost and management
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chats Enables interaction with users and helps to identify expectations and satisfaction levels
On-line Tools

Benchmarks online questionnaire
- Secure questionnaire available online for self completion
- Add access for unlimited number of additional staff
- Detailed guidelines defining how each question should be answered, available from pop-up window right in the survey
- Display previous years answers and notes at the click of a button
- On site review by Yardstick auditors to ensure accuracy of information provided and credibility in the reported results
- Information collected identifies: Planning, asset management and service delivery best practice; park land and asset provision; costs and revenue with matched information to provide calculation of performance metrics; sustainability practices and community engagement and programs
- Country specific questions, updated annually based on member feedback.

Benchmarks online reporting
- All results available online
- Detailed menus to quickly find the information you need
- Select your own peer group for more accurate comparison
- Select a specific organisation you wish to benchmark with.

Individual performance report
- Provides a simple and quick overview of key results and performance
- Key results provided in summary graphs
- Includes peer group selection
- Management performance assessed and scored against industry best practice
- Printable format to share with others.

Visitor survey reporting
- Group and individual results
- Identifies who are using your parks assets (and by extension who isn't)
- Importance and satisfaction of individual park services
- Overall park satisfaction
- Benchmark with other organisations to provide relevance and industry reference point to provide meaningful performance assessment.
- Results are now available as an on-line report
The Parks Yardstick programme is currently operating in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Denmark and Finland
Contact us for more information on pricing and subscriptions
Make an enquiry