Aberdeen City Council has saved over £1,000,000 in refunds and savings following a forensic energy cost audit from Professional Cost Management Group (PCMG).
As part of wider support for their community, Aberdeen City Council provides centralised energy invoicing across numerous sites, including schools, public spaces and domestic properties.
With an energy expenditure exceeding £14 million a year, billing accuracy and efficiency is crucial to optimising public spend.
Gary Butler, Commercial Manager at Aberdeen City Council, said: “As a local authority, we are under constant tightening budgets and pressure to save public money where we can.
“We’re delighted with the results that PCMG has delivered for the Council; they worked closely with our energy team, guided us through each phase of the project, and were meticulous in scrutinising our energy bills. The whole process was relatively straightforward. Overall, an extremely worthwhile exercise on this occasion.”
A forensic energy cost audit analyses settled invoices at forensic level to pinpoint all cost recovery opportunities and ongoing savings.
PCMG is the UK’s leading provider of audit and cost recovery services – working across the private and public sector.
At the beginning of the audit process, PCMG discussed the scope of the audit and obtained all the required permissions. The team then interrogated each invoice line by line for every meter across the council’s extensive portfolio for historical overcharges.
James Paine, Director of Business Development at PCMG, commented: “A forensic cost audit is an indispensable financial due diligence exercise at any time – but the value of this service is particularly underlined with public funds.
“The sheer size of the council’s estate could have made pinpointing specific errors almost impossible. This is where our expertise in this type of scrupulous analysis proved invaluable.”
The findings included in £838,283 refunds and £257,814 annual savings; resulting in £1,096,097 in total recoveries.
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James continued: “Finding no errors, no refunds or savings is the so-called worst outcome of an audit, but it only means we are giving our client a ‘clean bill of health.’
“However, when we are successful in identifying past errors and anomalies, this allows us to return value where it belongs – in this case for the Council to ultimately invest back into their community – making these types of outcomes rewarding for everyone.”
More information on Forensic Energy Cost Audits and the full Aberdeen City Council case study can be found here or you can contact PCMG’s experts by emailing [email protected]
