unzip test.zip ==> This uncompresses and keeps the original zip file.

gunzip test.gz ==> Removes the .gz file after uncompressing.
Is there any switch to make the .gz file available after uncompression.

Thanx in advance.

To uncompress a .gz file you would use the following:

gzip -d test.gz

That will uncompress the .gz file like unzip would uncompress a .zip file.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
~Verta

No, it doesn't help, Verta.
What devs would like to achieve is to preserve both files, the unzipped version AND the zipped version (after having unzipped it).
I still have no clue how to deal with that.
(piping ?? tee -command ?? , don't know yet)

cheers

Wollie

Sorry Wollie, I wasn't sure what you were trying to accomplish but now I think I understand.

You want to use gzip to uncompress a file but you want to keep the original .gz file correct? From everything I've read on gzip, the only way to accomplish this is if the file was a .tgz or a .tar.gz file.

Here's an example:

File name = test.tar.gz

gunzip -c test.tar.gz | tar -xv -

This will extract all of the contents of the zipped file and retain the original test.tar.gz file.

Hope this helps a little more then my last answer :)

Regards
~Verta

Just thinking about this some more and trying to find an easier way to do this by just using the .gz files. You could make a copy, extract the copy, and that would leave the original.

cp test.gz testToBeUnzipped.gz && gunzip testToBeUnzipped.gz

That'll unzip the copy and basically leave the original untouched.

Regards
~Verta

Verta,

I like your approach in response no. 3, that's kind of what I was looking for.
Let's hope that it will help devs too.

cheers

Wollie

cat file.gz | gzip -d > file

???

works as well

cheers
Wollie

Lessons from the
Untold Success Story:
Outsourcing
Engineering and
Facilities Management
STEVE BURDON, University of Technology, Sydney
AJAY BHALLA, Cass Business School, City University
Over the past decade, there has been proliferation
in the number of studies looking into IT enabled
outsourcing. Little attention has been given to outsourcing
of services in other sectors, such as Engineering
and Facilities Management (EFM), which
have also seen explosive growth. The article builds
on a market research study of twenty-six outsourcing
contracts making up approximately fifteen percent
of Australia’s EFM segment. This article aims
to take a detailed look at the benefits sought and
actually obtained from EFM outsourcing. The most
successful contracts were then correlated against
the most successful practitioners and the management
issues further examined in five case studies.
A number of learning points were apparent, and
these can be grouped under four generic success
factors: choice of contract style and management,
relationship management, innovation management
and workforce management.

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Outsourcing, Engineering and Facilities
Management, Australia, New Zealand, Key performance
indicators
Introduction
Organizations have been increasingly turning to outsourcing
in an attempt to enhance their competitiveness,
increase profitability and refocus on their core
business. In the academic and practitioner literature,
emphasis has shifted from outsourcing parts, componentry,
and hardware subsystems towards the
even greater unexploited potentials that intellectually-
based systems offer (Quinn, 2000). Over the past
decade this has led to abundant research in the area
of IT/IS management outsourcing. To add to this,
Europe and North America has traditionally been
the focus of outsourcing studies. More recently,
Lacity, Willcocks and Feeny (2004) have looked into
the Business process outsourcing, and Berggren
and Bengtsson (2004) have re-drawn our attention
to outsourcing in the manufacturing sector. Comparatively,
Engineering and Facilities Management
(EFM) outsourcing has received little attention. Typically
EFM outsourcing spans engineering services
such as operations and maintenance outsourcing services,
which include structural, mechanical, civil,
instrumentation and electrical maintenance. Facilities
Management involves services associated with real
estate management and systems. Of course the motivations
for outsourcing in any industry are driven by
an ever-greater organizational pursuit to ensure cost
discipline, whilst improving quality of service and
delivery capability (Domberger, 1998). However, as
the outsourcing has become a popular mechanism
for differentiation by contracting out the non-core
activities, the differences in the motivations for outsourcing
have emerged. This has been ignited by
the debate as to what is core and what is non-core
function. For instance, Lacity et al. (2004) noted that
back office functions are considered as key contribu-
576 European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005
doi:10.1016/j.emj.2005.09.012
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, 2005

2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain
0263-2373 $30.00
tors to competitive advantage. In this respect, organizations
can benefit by drawing learning from different
types of outsourcing and the outsourcing
practices in different geographic locations.
This paper is based on a study carried out by the University
of Technology, Sydney in collaboration with
Transfield Services, one of the largest EFM outsourcing
providers in Australasia and South East Asia, and
Boston Consulting Group. A questionnaire was sent
to the top fifty Transfield Services customers which
made up 75% of Transfield Services $1 billion annual
turnover. The questionnaire covered the benefits
organizations sought and achieved from outsourcing,
and asked executives to rank the key success factors
in an outsourcing relationship. Each of the organisations
contacted were asked to complete the questionnaire
for their largest outsourcing services contract,
whether that was with Transfield Services or another
provider. We received responses from twenty-six
firms in Australia and New Zealand. The survey
was followed up by case study analysis of five companies.
In each case, they were asked to provide additional
details of their largest outsourcing contract.
The companies were: BlueScope Steel Port Kembla,
New South Wales (NSW) Police Property Services
Department, NSW Department of Commerce, Shell
Australia and Tranzrail (NZ). Two or three managers
from each company were interviewed on one or two
occasions each. The managers came from three levels—
those with overall responsibility for strategic
outsourcing, those with responsibility for outsourcing
Operations and Maintenances, and those with
responsibility for the operational implementation of
the outsourcing contract.
The paper proceeds as follows: first, we present the
motivations for outsourcing, and report the benefits
organizations sought and actually obtained from
EFM outsourcing. Second, we identify the four key
management areas for success. Our objective is to
present lessons for senior executives, who will learn
to assess the viability of benefits of outsourcing, and
generate learnings as to what are the major underlying
determinants of successful outsourcing strategy.
On average, the organisations whose contracts were
analysed believed they would be making further
use of outsourcing providers, but which services
should stay in-house and which and how services
needed careful and continual review?
Motivations for Outsourcing
The literature on outsourcing often cites generating
cost efficiencies, and controlling the costs as the key
reason for outsourcing. Outside vendors are regarded
as specialists who can provide similar or
better level of service at a lower cost than available
in-house (Barthe´lemy and Dominique, 2004). However,
one-off cost reduction is not the only driver.
Through outsourcing, firms can generate various
non-financial benefits. Firms can respond to environmental
uncertainty in ways that do not increase costs
associated with internal bureaucracy (D’Aveni and
Ravenscraft, 1994). They can also focus on building
their core competencies, while outsourcing the noncore
activities to specialist vendors for both one-off
and continual improvements. This is because firms
are reported to have limitations as to the depth of
specialist knowledge possessed by the suppliers
(Quinn, 2000). For example, it has been reported that
many firms find it increasingly difficult to acquire,
develop, and retain the people and technical knowhow
in-house necessary to maintain existing complex
systems and develop and implement new technologies
(DiRomualdo and Gurbaxani, 1998). There is
also hesitation as to if the firm will be able to afford
development risks for any desired innovation, as
compared to suppliers who have vested interest in
innovation and are able to spread risks across
multiple present and future clients (Quinn, 2000).
By outsourcing the entire activity that is not a core
competence (Quinn, 2000) to specialist vendors,
firms, thus, can speed innovation and accrue higher
returns at lower costs. However, it has pointed out
that what is core and what is non-core is an academic
debate (Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2002), and firms
can indeed benefit by outsourcing of core competencies
(Baden-Fuller et al., 2000), In summary, the
academic and practitioner literature continues to
emphasise that many critical capabilities reside outside
the boundaries of the firm and that outsourcing
enables firms to access these at lower costs. In two of
the case studies reviewed, eg outsourcing the operation
and maintenance of railway tracks and oil refinery
operations have safety and reliability issues that
are both strategic and essential.
Drivers for Engineering and Facilities
Management Outsourcing
To determine the importance of drivers for outsourcing,
the questionnaire listed fourteen benefits and
asked respondents to rank, by decreasing order, the
importance of these to their decision to outsource.
To ascertain the degree to which executives were satisfied
in attaining the benefits they were seeking, the
questionnaire asked respondents to rate their satisfaction
with the outcome on a scale of 1–10.
Cost Control is the Antecedent to Outsourcing
The survey showed that cost reduction is twice as
important as the next most desired benefit of outsourcing
– enhancing reliability – and stands alone
as the main reason for outsourcing (See Figure 1).
While there are other benefits sought and expected
from outsourcing functions, those benefits are measured
and tend to be valued in terms of cost reduction.
All the firms studied had initiated an
outsourcing policy in order to reduce costs, with
OUTSOURCING ENGINEERING AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005 577
the desired cost saving being between 10 and 20%.
Cost savings are sought in two stages: initial cost
savings derived from restructuring the workforce,
restructuring processes, and introducing new systems
and ongoing cost savings derived from implementation
of best practice, continual innovation
and the reduction of liability costs achieved through,
for example, improved safety levels and a more productive
split of preventative and emergency maintenance
operations.
Cost reduction received an above average score on
satisfaction but the case studies revealed that there
is a difference between degrees of satisfaction at the
strategic level and degrees of satisfaction at the operational
level. At the strategic level, where the ‘big picture’
is clearer, the satisfaction with cost savings was
higher than at the operational level, where overall
cost savings are not always immediately noticeable.
Cost savings peak at around 4–5 years, as does satisfaction
with the outsourcing relationship. The case
studies showed that cost savings are being delivered
but revealed a number of factors that inhibit satisfaction
with cost savings, particularly in the first year of
the contract. Invariably, the reason for this is that the
implementation of the contract reveals the true cost
of the function and, in doing so, obscures the real
cost savings. The cost of the original in-house service
is usually misunderstood and underestimated, both
as a raw cost and in terms of long-term liability costs.
Studies have shown that when internal transaction
costs are thoroughly analysed, they can be extremely
high (Quinn and Hilmer, 1994), and often the lack of
factoring hidden outsourcing costs inflates the outsourcing
benefits (Barthe´lemy, 2001).
Primary Benefits Sought After Costs Emphasise Enhanced
Reliability, Quality and Access to Best Practice
Whilst cost is the number one priority and a necessary
prerequisite for any outsourcing arrangement,
improvement in reliability are the number 2 and 3 elements
in importance. This is concurrent with the findings
reported by Kakabadse and Kakabadse (2002).
Enhanced reliability and quality is interpreted differently
in engineering and facilities maintenance organisations.
For example, the rail operator Tranz Rail
uses the rail network downtime to measure reliability,
and measure the track quality index to evaluate
quality. For the facilities maintenance organisations,
quality compliance is a key performance indicator,
and reliability is primarily measured by the responsiveness
and capability of the subcontractors, for instance
the elapsed time to fix a breakdown. Access
to best practice is interpreted in five areas, namely Access
to Best IT Systems and to Best Contract Alliance
Practices, Best of Class Benchmarking of Costs, Best
Practice in Preventative/Breakdown Procedures and
Workforce Utilisation Practice. There was a variation
in perceived need for access to best practice, and con-
Figure 1 Companies Seek Reduced Costs, Improved Quality and Enhanced Reliability Through Access to Best
Practice
OUTSOURCING ENGINEERING AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT
578 European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005
trary to the findings reported by Kakabadse and
Kakabadse (2002), this aspect of outsourcing appears
to have minimal impact on the decision processes involved
in implementing an outsourcing relationship,
whether it is a simple transactional contract, or an alliance.
Cost savings, and perhaps service levels, dominate
the decision process.
Flexibility, Focus on Core Competencies, and Innovation
Emerge as Secondary Benefits
Firms value flexibility in the contract to deal with the
changes, although to a lesser extent than they value
cost and quality. The interviews revealed that flexibility
to change the contract, specifically the Key Performance
Indicators (KPI’s), is essential to the successful
development of the relationship. The initial KPI’s are
usually a guesstimate, which is the result, of the difficulty
firms experience in estimating the true cost of
embedded functions such as maintenance.
Other secondary outsourcing benefits emerged as the
management and resource focus on core competencies,
and innovation and transformational change to
achieve cost savings. For the EFM sector the firms
gave eight different areas where they sought innovation
(see Figure 2). Satisfaction with innovation is at
its highest when the innovation has resulted in improved
safety and improved service delivery. However,
it is not seen as effective in reducing costs,
saving capital or improving process engineering
and management. This would appear to be a major
impediment to further outsourcing of services and
moving to a greater number of alliance style contracts.
The outsourcing providers will need to learn
greater industry and service skills to improve their
contribution to continual innovation and continuous
improvements in cost and service parameters.
Least Valued Benefits
The least valued benefits (Figure 1) were: understanding
business objectives, improving customer
relations, improving labour relations, conserving
capital and increasing speed to market. There was
no correlation between satisfaction with the contract
and achievements in these benefit areas. For some of
these benefits, such as understanding business objectives,
customer and labour relations, it is likely that
some organisations took them as a given and their
satisfaction levels were only affected as a means to
deliver the essential and primary benefits of cost
and service level.
Managerial Guidelines for Success
Based on our research, we propose four key success
factors as a guiding framework for how managers
can best leverage their current capabilities and realise
the benefits of EFM outsourcing.
Choice of Contract Style and Management
Choice of Contract
Two main types of contract exist in EFM outsourcing:
Schedule of Rates and Alliance. Alliance contracts for
either services or skills are defined as being ‘‘openbook’’,
with profit based on performance and penalties
for non-performance. We found that alliance
type contracts for the EFM sector tend to be of 5 years
duration compared to 3 years for schedule of rates.
Schedule of Rates contracts tend to be used as a starting
point for outsourcing contracts by organisations
with less outsourcing experience and less understanding
of their cost and service levels (quality
and reliability).
Most firms in our sample believed that alliance type
relationships are required to deliver innovation and
best-in-class practice. For organisations where additional
benefits of alliance and strategic alliance models
are required, the interviews revealed that the
prerequisite of both parties is to meet a number of
essential foundation requirements.
For any outsourcing contract, the first step is that cost
savings of at least 10% are required in most instances
Figure 2 Satisfaction with Innovation Delivery Compared to Expectations (%)
OUTSOURCING ENGINEERING AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005 579
otherwise the efforts involved in using an outside
party are not seen to be worthwhile. Once this level
one requirement has been met, the second level, trust
and flexibility, needs to be addressed before implementing
a partnership model. Until this need has been
met to the satisfaction of both partners it is difficult to
meet level three requirements of setting the right culture
for alliancing. Once level three, the setting of the
right culture, is achieved joint development of process
management and best in class visions can be achieved.
Once this level has been satisfied, it is possible to
move to level five where a strategic alliance can be
created, and strategic management decisions can be
entered into successfully. The companies that had
successfully moved to strategic alliances made sure
they had satisfied the four level requirements before
sharing strategic management decisions.
Contract Management as a Core Competency
Whether the decision to outsource a service was
taken by the senior functional manager head or at a
more senior level, there was a range of views on
whether contract management of outsourcing providers
was essential and a core competence. There
was a significant difference in the views of those with
the most successful relationship: 40% of the most
successful but only 20% of the least successful companies
saw contract management as an essential
competence. In addition, of those organisations that
were successful and saw it as a core competence,
66% thought these skills needed to be developed before
the contract was let. Interestingly, there was a
general agreement amongst both the least and most
successful organisations that the management skills
required for alliance contracts were more complex
and harder to develop and implement.
Innovation Management
Effective Management of Key Performance Indicators
Successful relationships depend on Key Performance
Indicators (KPIs) that accurately reflect the top priorities
of the firm. Typically in case of EFM outsourcing
KPIs can be framed in eight categories: Cost reduction;
Service levels speed and quality; Service levels
availability of plant; Meeting statutory requirements;
Safety; Customer Service; Linkage with end users
performance; Contract Management. They play a
vital role in aligning motivation, action and reward.
The process of analysing the customer’s needs, allocating
degrees of importance and setting targets of
performance and linking these to the outsourcing
provider’s payment is a key success factor. The latter
is usually undertaken by linking 100% achievement
to a profit percentage of the contract – often around
6%–8% – and then this profit percentage is reduced
if there is less than satisfactory performance in one
of the KPI parameters. The systems and culture to
make this a tough but fair reflection of the results
and a proactive motivator for both parties is a sign
of a true alliance of equals.
Engaging in Constructive Tension
The most successful outsourcing relationships are the
ones that have constructive tension built into the contract.
Constructive tension is the contractual mechanism
by which the relationship is kept invigorated
to maintain the performance of the service provider.
To enable the constructive tension, it is essential that
firms have a renegotiation option built into their contracts.
Constructive tension can be in a number of
forms, depending on the nature of the relationship,
the activities being outsourced, and the number of
agencies involved in the outsourcing contract. For instance,
the mechanism used by BlueScope Port Kembla
is the rolling five year contract where the contract
is renegotiated every year, but for a further five
years. This allows the provider and client to negotiate
fresh KPI’s based on recent performance annually
but keeps enough guaranteed length in the relationship
to allow certainty for the workforce. Key to generating
meaningful constructive tension is linking the
contractual mechanism to the KPI’s and ensuring
that the KPI’s reflect accurately the business imperatives
of the client. A constructive tension mechanism
that is working well will be iterative – that is, the
KPI’s will change with each implementation of the
mechanism, in the case of BlueScope Port Kembla,
that is every year as the contract is renewed.
‘‘Our KPI’s today are not the ones we had a year ago and
the ones we’re going to have next year aren’t the ones we
have now... Every six months we have to jump a hurdle
and you can’t jump it on that day. It has to start day
one.. [Your] first goal is to make the KPI’s and... your second
goal is the renewal of the contract.’’
TSL Alliance Manager, BlueScope Port Kembla
Relationship Management
Senior Management Involvement
Most companies in our sample wrote clauses with regard
to KPIs but reported that they are at best a good
guesstimate. The key to a successful ongoing relationship
is the ability to alter them as the true extent
and scope of the work required emerges. To enable
effective relationship management many firms operate
with an alliance board and alliance team structure.
We found that most of the firms with
successful outsourcing relationships were better at
managing relationships at three levels (see Figure 3).
For two of the case study organisations the decision
to outsource their O&M service was a strategic one
and the CEO took the issue to the main board for
endorsement. In these instances, this action had a
profound impact for the users of the outsourced service.
Because the decision to outsource and its successful
implementation was taken at CEO level,
debate amongst users about whether this was a sensible
decision was curtailed. Their clear task was to
successfully implement the decision to outsource
and part of their bonus pool was based on how well
OUTSOURCING ENGINEERING AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT
580 European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005
that implementation was undertaken. Where the user
base was geographically dispersed, or where the predisposition
to stay with sub-contracting was strong,
this straightforward change to the reward system
was a powerful cultural change agent.
Ability to Manage the Total Cost Element Model
Firms that reported a higher degree of satisfaction
typically undertook a wider definition of partnership
of the total costs involved, with both organisations in
all the 10 cost elements. While this was not unusual
for the outsourcing provider’s total costs, such as
implementation and termination costs, it was more
unusual to ask both parties to manage previous functional
system costs of HR and accounting, reduction
in divisional support staff and the question of future
annual productivity savings.
However, in the instances examined, the level of annual
savings from these three elements was an additional
13%. The success in pursuing these indirect
cost savings was improved by a joint effort and interestingly,
could be addressed in a client/server or an
alliance type contract, although from a cultural fit
perspective was easier from an alliance approach.
In the case of EFM outsourcing there is greater transparency
regarding costs and the service provider’s
profit margins. In the case of firms we studied, the
average savings from the direct labour were often
in the order of 20%. These are often easily identified
as they are negotiated prior to the selection of the
outsourcing provider.
We found that successful organisations spent considerable
time focusing on ensuring the costs associated
with services that were no longer required were eliminated.
For instance, firms should be able to reduce the
corporate overheads emerging from centralised functions
such as HR, IT, Finance and administration,
which are typically in the range of 5-10% of the outsourced
function. Firms should also pay attention to
the one-off implementation costs of making the
change. In the firms we studied, the cost of implementation
as a percentage of the contract varied significantly
from 2% to 8% and is often amortized over
the length of the contract. In the case of EFM outsourcing,
firms frequently negotiate the reimbursements
for overheads and their profit margin covering the
outsourcing provider before signing the contract.
However, in the case of successful outsourcing relationships
performance payments are part of the equation
and constructive tension is created from the use
of KPIs and contractual renewal arrangements.
Workforce Management
When choosing an outsourcing provider, managers
need to evaluate the vendor’s ability to provide
excellence in workforce management. In nearly all
cases the initial once-off cost saving is based on
the outsourcing provider’s ability to manage the
Figure 3 Managing Three Levels of Customer Relationship
to Outsource
50
33
50
33
17
33 33
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Has Labour Relations
Improved
Has There Been A
Decrease In
Unionisation
Increase In
Workforce Skills
Decrease In
Workforce Skills
17 16
Difference Between Least
And Most Successful
Relationships (%)
17 33
Least successful relationships
Most successful relationships
Figure 4 Differences Experienced in Terms of Shifts in Workforce Attributes
OUTSOURCING ENGINEERING AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT
European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005 581
workforce more efficiently than the organisation. The
different cultural approach to back office staff and
the fact that for the outsourcing provider they are front
office staff was well described by Drucker (2002):
‘‘When a new conductor is hired to turn around an orchestra
that has suffered years of drift and neglect, he cannot as
a rule fire any but a few of the sloppiest or most superannuated
players So it is the conductor’s people skills that
makes the difference.’’
The detailed examination of how the workforce
reductions form the agenda for future research, but
the three elements involved are: reduced numbers,
improved quality and better business processes.
The ability of the outsourcing provider to improve labour
relations and increase workforce skills is well
illustrated by Figure 4 below. There has been some
academic debate about the impact of cost reduction
and the level of unionization but in all the contracts
analysed, the outsourcing provider’s staff were all
union members as they had been when the services
were undertaken in-house. The difference appears
to be related to the much greater attention, time
and importance shown to the employees rather than
whether they were in a union. This greater interest
and communication, however, does appear to decrease
the power of the union as can be seen in
Figure 4. The difference in the impact on these three
criteria between most and least successful relationships
was significant.
Concluding Comments
The relative success of the EFM sector in Australia
and NZ in terms of satisfaction versus other services
outsourcing sectors such as IT&T and BPO was significant.
It is believed that the lessons from this study
could well have some generic application to other
sectors and perhaps in other geographic locations
for EFM. Future studies could more closely examine
cost savings and the reasons for these. Researchers
can also undertake further research to test the generic
applicability of these reasons for success.
References
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to outmanoeuvre: outsourcing re-defines competitive
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Barthe´lemy, J. (2001) The Hidden Costs of IT Outsourcing.
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of total IT outsourcing: An empirical investigation of
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Drucker, P. (2002) ‘They’re Not Employees. They’re
People’. Harvard Business Review, Feb 80(2), 70–78.
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STEVE BURDON,
School of Management,
University of Technology,
Quay Street, Haymarket,
Sydney, Australia. E-mail:
steve.burdon@uts.edu.au
Steve Burdon is Professor
of E-Business at the University
of Technology,
Sydney. His research
encompasses outsourcing,
alliances, e-business, innovation
and entreprenership.
AJAY BHALLA, Faculty
of Management, Cass
Business School, City
University, 106 Bunhill
Row, London ECIY 8TZ.
E-mail: a.bhalla@city.ac.uk
Ajay Bhalla is Lecturer in
Technology at Cass Business
School, with research
interests in studying the
outsourcing and offshore
practices of Global 500
firms.
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582 European Management Journal Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 576–582, October 2005