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Today's facilities managers intent on building best-in-class maintenance operations are discovering that utilizing a facility condition assessment model is helping them construct sound capital improvement plans (CIPs) and become more visionary planners.
The number one consideration among top facility managers is strategic planning. However, effective planning for the future is not possible without an accurate assessment of the current conditions of the assets under management. Only then can an accurate forecast of the potential factors impacting the overall performance of the facilities be understood.
Successful facility management achieves two objectives: 1) it clearly communicates the strategy of the capital renewal process to the facilities team, and 2) it insures that the facilities team endorse the importance of standardized tactics which define how preventative maintenance is expected to operate, control budgets, and fit within a flexible system of maintenance planning and scheduling. These are the basics on which a "best-in-class" maintenance operation is built.
Designing and implementing a capital improvement plan that addresses the issues of proper maintenance and cost containment requires facilities managers to perform comprehensive condition assessments of the facilities. This is not a simple process. To create a meaningful capital improvement plan, the process must address all aspects of facilities including: infrastructure, site improvements, structures, systems, and, fixed assets. The resulting strategic plan can provide management with the tool for effectively operating and preserving the organization's assets. To be successful, facility managers must also be able to communicate these strategies with the business managers responsible for overall operations.
Critical information about each facility, such as detailed specifications of individual components, date in service, effective life cycle, estimated replacement cost and budgets needs to be identified and tracked for a capital improvement plan to be effective. From the first day any specific component of the capital improvement plan is put into service, a plan for its replacement should be developed, monitored and adjusted as required throughout its life cycle. In reality, even this practice can not eliminate every unplanned repair or crisis. However, having the capital improvement plan in place means that unplanned events should not cause a major disruption in daily operations and/or budget cycles.
Today's property operations management (POM) software lets facilities managers effectively manage operations and maintenance services, and make better use of staff. A good POM system facilitates the capital improvement planning (CIP) process and provides a sound basis for strategic decision-making and implementation. Facility and business managers can use POM data to access critical information about their physical plant and fixed assets that is unavailable with traditional facility audit methods. By analyzing the life-cycle of a building's component systems and site features, facility managers are able to integrate physical plant management, financial planning, capital acquisition, resource allocation, and institutional stewardship.
Property operations management systems track the on-going condition of each component of the facilities. This provides readily accessible and fully reportable data for maximizing the investment in, and maintenance and repair of, all assets under management. This real-time data collection includes: condition assessments, asset inventories, capital renewal, resource management, space utilization and, all aspects of maintenance.
Such current data allows the CIP to be continually monitored and updated to reflect the actual conditions and real needs. The capital improvement plan then becomes a living document that monitors the changing conditions of the asset. Once established, the CIP is easily maintained and can be readily adapted to evolving conditions without time-consuming and expensive customization.
This process results in prudent planning for the future, as well as increased knowledge and foresight about the on-going needs and demands of each facility under management. And, by applying analytical solutions to facilities management, capital improvement plans can keep operating costs under control, while improving maintenance and customer service.
By creating a virtual model of an organization's facilities, POM systems support informed facilities management decisions by presenting data that can analyze and report on how different funding levels of operations and maintenance would affect the long term conditions of the facilities. POM systems include the ability to create an effective CIP through:
� Benchmarking facility conditions
� Establishing condition assessment targets
� Forecasting long-range funding requirements
� Prioritizing spending of limited budgets
� Optimizing project economies of scale opportunities, and,
� Predicting the impact of changing budgets.
Facilities management today is really a business within a business. By applying "best practices" to the capital renewal process by using facility condition assessments, facilities management professionals are coming to recognize that they must think of, and begin running, their facility operations as separate businesses to both anticipate needs and reduce costs.
The importance of having critical facilities condition assessment and capital renewal information at the fingertips of management for strategic planning purposes emerges as changes continue to unfold in the facilities industry. This brings to the forefront the importance of a comprehensive property operations management system to the overall strategic business planning process.
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