Case Study - Education

The University of Maine

 

The Challenge

The University of Maine promotes environmental stewardship across its campus. They needed a solution that advanced their leadership position, facilitated their long-term strategic plan, and supported the decision making process as they address the challenges of planning, operating and managing their campus assets and infrastructure.

The Solution

The University of Maine (UMaine) was founded in 1865 and is located in the town of Orono. As the State’s premier public University, it is among the most comprehensive higher education institutions in the Northeast and attracts students from across the U.S. and more than 60 countries.

University of Maine campus

The massive scale of their facilities requires that UMaine effectively develop, plan, and execute strategies that are based on accurate and up-to-date information. UMaine understands that capital investment decision making, based on current knowledge, is an essential element in helping them to achieve their strategic, operational and efficiency objectives. Without knowledge, a “reactive versus proactive” approach to operating and managing infrastructure and assets typically becomes the accepted practice and most often results in wasted resources, increased project costs, and the inability to prioritize expenditures to meet long term goals.

UMaine also understood that they needed a solution to create a central knowledgebase from the multiple sources that housed critical data on their infrastructure. They needed a solution that adapted to their business processes and work flow to give them the ability to develop sound and sustainable capital investment strategies that align with their priorities, strategic plan and available funding. UMaine wanted to be able to keep their knowledge base current and dynamic to improve how they generate and manage information needed about capital, lifecycle, energy and security projects.

To meet their objectives, UMaine selected 4tell’s iPlan™ Sustainable Performance Governance Solution. iPlan helped them to create the knowledge to support strategic investment decisions and to establish a 25 year capital plan that supports and aligns with their long term sustainability goals and strategic plan.

The project scope included comprehensive due diligence on all aspects of UMaine’s built environment. This process determined building system and component lifecycle renewal criteria; identified energy retrofit and environmental improvement opportunities; located critical areas of security non-compliance and related risk factors; and, incorporated all relevant legacy data. Now with iPlan providing a comprehensive and centralized knowledge base, UMaine has the solutions, functionality and tools to optimize the performance and operations of their assets, infrastructure, buildings and facilities.

As a result, UMaine is able to develop capital investment strategies to reduce the backlog of deferred maintenance and address the highest priority needs based on their actual business requirements and strategic vision.

Using iPlan, UMaine now has an innovative solution to achieve their strategic, operational and efficiency objectives resulting in sustainable performance optimization and environmental stewardship of their campus.

The Results

  • Improved capital investment strategies based on informed decisions that align with the strategic plan
  • Lower operating expenses and cost avoidance
  • Reduced energy consumption and environmental impact
  • Optimization and prioritization of project investments across lifecycle, energy and security requirements
  • Creation of a centralized knowledge base of their built environment
  • Institutional leadership that fosters and empowers a sustainable community

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