Soft facilities management services are included in many, but not all, PFI contracts. Where soft services are included, they are generally sub-contracted for medium term periods that are shorter than the long term PFI contract. The authority's PFI contract will generally contain provisions for the value testing and/or benchmarking of pricing of the soft services at intervals during the contract term, and these provisions will be mirrored in the sub-contract. Changes can be made to the specification of soft services by following variation procedures in the PFI contract. The points at which sub-contracts are relet or benchmarked provide an opportunity for the pricing of changes to the original service requirements under competitive conditions.
In some PFI arrangements, soft services have not been included in the PFI arrangements, and are contracted separately by the public sector authority.