What is benchmarking? Benchmarking is the process of identifying and learning from the best practices from around the world. It is a powerful tool in the quest for continuous quality improvement. Often the performance of an individual company or project is compared to those of comparative companies in comparative industries, more often than not, their competitors. Benchmarking can highlight areas of weakness, and through the resolution of management processes, improve the company or project's ability to achieve its desired outcomes. Success!

Benchmarking is a continual and systematic comparison of own efficiency in productivity, quality and production process with enterprises and organisations representing top achievements. Benchmarking can also be defined as the use of systematic methods to compare oneself with others and find better ways to do one's work. Benchmarking looks at others in order to learn from them.

The sample size of projects for benchmarking should be approximately 20 to 25 projects completed over the past 6 to 8 years. A higher level of importance should be placed upon more recently completed projects, whilst keeping in mind the importance of trends, as a tool for evaluating projects spanning a number of years. It is also recommended that sample data be gathered from several current incomplete projects, despite output data not being available. This ensures that the sample reflects the current standard project system. 

Even small projects require benchmarking analysis. Process industries spend a significant proportion of their total annual capital budgets investing in small projects.