As an individual I cannot imagine anyone that would not cringe at the thought of just throwing away $100,000. However, I have seen organizations do this time and time again. They are not literally taking a stack of bills and tossing them into a garbage can. However, when you hire someone to collect data on your facility and/or site infrastructure you might as well be if you don’t take an active role during the project.
“I just want to get a report”
“So and so told me that we had to, so we better just do it…”
“We don’t really know what we need so….”
“I hope we get what we are looking for…”
These are the kind of thoughts and motivations that often lead organizations to waste large amounts of money and time on Facility Condition Assessments (FCAs), Equipment Inventory & Tagging, Energy Audits and/or Accessibility Assessments, and getting very little of value in return.
Gathering consistent and defensible data on your facility and infrastructure portfolio is well worth the investment. However, it is not something that can be done solely by a third party. You must be prepared to no only invest your money, but also your time, and the time of your team members that have the most knowledge of your buildings and assets.
The best assessment professional and/or assessment team will never be able to visually capture sufficient information when compared to the knowledge that exists in the heads of your colleagues. We recognize that nearly every Facility Management team has been asked “to do more with less” in the last decade plus, and finding time to spend with assessment teams can seem like a lower priority than putting out fires and actually fixing your buildings.
However, without that institutional knowledge working its way into your data and reports, you are most likely just throwing good money after a bad outcome. Invest your time AND your money in the collection of consistent and defensible data to allow your organization to make better decisions and improve the quality and performance of your facility and infrastructure portfolio.