Celebrating 250 Years. Managing the Next 50.

Are Your Facilities Ready for the Next 50 Years?

America’s historic and aging institutional buildings are community landmarks worth celebrating. Many are also carrying Deferred Capital Renewal and Maintenance (DCRM) backlogs that are invisible from the outside, and growing more costly with every year of deferral.

Roth IAMS works with public sector organizations across North America to help them understand what their buildings need, then build the defensible case for investment.

Explore the Challenge
01

The Challenge

The average US commercial building is approximately 53 years old (as of 2021). The average school building is 49 (as of 2023). Much of America’s institutional building stock — the schools, civic halls, university buildings, and municipal facilities that define our communities — is now in the most complex and expensive phase of its useful life.

Buildings in the 40-to-60-year range require the most intensive capital investment of their lifecycle. Systems are aging past their expected useful life. Buildings constructed before 1978 may contain lead-based paint and asbestos, triggering remediation requirements during any renovation work. Systems built for one era now have to perform in another. And in many cases, the DCRM backlog has been building quietly for decades.

These buildings need attention. The open question is whether the organizations that own them have a clear picture of what it will cost, and a plan in place before the backlog becomes the crisis that decides for them.

Your Buildings Are Getting Older. Here’s What That Actually Means for Your Capital Plan. → What Is MUSH — and Why Does It Matter for Facility Asset Management? →
53 Years
Average age of a US commercial building
49 Years
Average age of a US school building
02

The Hidden Risk

Most capital plans have a gap.

Standard facility assessments tell you what’s visible. They document condition, estimate replacement costs, and generate a list of needs. For most modern buildings, that’s a useful foundation. For historic buildings, it is not enough.

Standard capital planning misses 80% of a facility’s total cost of ownership — it shows up later, as the backlog. In historic buildings, that number is even harder to surface. A standard Facility Condition Assessment (FCA) is not designed for the specific risks that historic construction presents — and what those assessments miss has direct consequences for your capital plan.

You can’t manage what you can’t see and an FCA is just the beginning. For historic buildings, it needs to be paired with structural engineering expertise, specialist investigation, and a capital planning methodology built for what these assets are. The details of what gets missed in a standard FCA for a historic building, and what a more complete assessment looks like, are covered in our May 2026 webinar.

See the Banks Center case — a more complete look surfaced close to $30M → Watch On Demand: When Heritage Meets Capital Planning — Making Defensible Decisions for Historic and Aging Buildings (May 26, 2026) → Read the Resource Document — article + PDF →
80%
Of total facility cost of ownership is hidden from standard capital planning
03

The Case for Action

The conversation around aging institutional buildings often stalls at the cost. That’s understandable. But the financial case for action is stronger than most organizations realize.

Rehabilitation of historic buildings typically costs 16% less than new construction and completes 18% faster. The economic, environmental, and community case for stewardship over replacement points the same way.

The most sustainable building is one that already exists. For organizations managing historic structures, that argument is as much financial and community as environmental.

The full case is laid out in our on-demand resources: what drives those numbers, what it means for long-term capital planning, and where the window for cost-effective intervention sits. It’s worth understanding before your next capital planning cycle.

Watch On Demand: Historic Structures — The Challenges of Extending the Useful Life of Your Biggest Asset (April 24, 2025) →
16% Less
Typical rehabilitation cost vs. new construction
18% Faster
Typical rehabilitation timeline vs. new construction
From the TYAMS Podcast

Maxine Coleman traces a pattern she sees across the sector: budget crises in the 70s and 80s left every college and university with deferred maintenance that has compounded ever since, and continues to grow.

Maxine Coleman  ·  Assistant VP of Facilities Operations, Vassar College  ·  The TYAMS Podcast, S1 E5
Hear the full story →
04

What Roth IAMS Brings

Managing historic and aging institutional buildings takes more than a standard FCA. At Roth IAMS, facility condition assessments are at the core of our work, conducted by full-time specialist teams who understand historic construction and material behavior. The data we deliver is built to hold up in front of a board, a council, or a funding body — not just a list of needs.

We work across integrated asset management strategies — from FCAs and structural engineering through to building performance, asset data management, and capital planning strategy.

17,500+
Building and Facility Condition Assessments (BCAs, FCAs) completed
$7B+
In renewal funding secured for clients
500M+
Square feet assessed
#1
Ranked on Sourcewell (US) and Canoe (Canada)

Project Stories

Project Story · Municipal

City of Portland, Maine

The James A. Banks Sr. Exposition Center opened in 1915. It is the oldest continuously operating arena in the United States — and it has hosted presidents, athletes, and artists across more than a century of community life. When the City of Portland needed to understand what it would take to keep it standing, Roth IAMS conducted a full FCA and structural assessment, identifying close to $30M in required upgrades and providing the defensible data to make the case for investment.

Read the Project Story →
Project Story · State Government

State of Maine

The Augusta Parking Garage was built in 1975. By the time Roth IAMS was engaged for a structural assessment, the original structural drawings were entirely absent. Our team developed an investigative approach to evaluate the post-tensioned concrete structure — giving the State the data it needed to make informed decisions about the asset’s future.

Read the Project Story →
Project Story · Higher Education

Vassar College

A campus founded in 1861 carries 52 buildings with it — each at a different stage of its lifecycle, each with its own capital renewal story. Roth IAMS conducted a multi-year FCA program across the Vassar portfolio, providing the consistent and defensible data the college needed to plan and prioritize investment across a historic higher education estate.

Read the Project Story →
From the Roth IAMS Blog

About That Whole “FCAs Have Jumped the Shark” Thing…

Bill Roth on why FCAs remain foundational practice for the organizations that manage institutional buildings at scale.

Read the post →

A Practical Next Step

For most organizations managing historic or aging institutional buildings, a practical next step is understanding what they own and what it will cost to manage over the next 25 to 50 years. That starts with a Facility Condition Assessment — though for buildings of this age and construction type, the assessment has to go further than a standard one. Scoping what that looks like for your portfolio is exactly the conversation we can help with.

The organizations we work with get the consistent and defensible data they need to make the case for investment, and a clear basis for prioritizing what gets addressed first.

Get your buildings to 2076

Start the Conversation

Your buildings have decades of service ahead. We can help you understand what it will take to get there. Tell us about your portfolio and we’ll share what a practical starting point looks like for your situation.

Not ready to connect? There’s more below — on-demand webinars, publications, and project stories if you want to go deeper.

  • #1 ranked on Sourcewell (US) & Canoe (Canada)
  • $7B+ in capital renewal funding secured for clients
  • Trusted by municipalities, universities, school districts & hospitals across North America
06

Dive Deeper

Webinars — On Demand

When Heritage Meets Capital Planning: Making Defensible Decisions for Historic and Aging Buildings

Andrej Culen — May 26, 2026 — What a standard FCA misses in historic buildings, capital investment prioritization, and defensible decision-making in practice. Includes the James A. Banks Sr. Exposition Center case study.

Watch On Demand →

Out of Site, Out of Mind: Deferred Capital Renewal and Maintenance Ignored in Aging Infrastructure

Mark Schrock — November 20, 2025 — The hidden costs inside your capital plan and why a 25-to-50-year stewardship outlook changes how you see your portfolio.

Watch On Demand →

Historic Structures: The Challenges of Extending the Useful Life of Your Biggest Asset

Andrej Culen — April 24, 2025 — The engineering realities of historic building management — the materials, the methods, and what standard assessments miss.

Watch On Demand →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is DCRM?
DCRM stands for Deferred Capital Renewal and Maintenance — the accumulated backlog of capital investment that an organization has postponed or underfunded over time. It is distinct from routine maintenance. DCRM represents the cost of renewing and replacing building systems and components that have reached or exceeded their expected useful life. Left unaddressed, DCRM backlogs grow faster than the rate of deferral, because deterioration accelerates once systems begin to fail.
What is a Facility Condition Assessment?
A Facility Condition Assessment (FCA) is a systematic evaluation of a building’s physical condition. It documents the state of building systems and components, estimates the cost to renew or replace them, and establishes a baseline for capital planning. An FCA produces a Facility Condition Index (FCI), which provides a consistent, comparable measure of condition across a portfolio. For historic buildings, standard FCAs require supplementary investigation to account for the specific risks and requirements of historic construction.
Why isn’t a standard FCA enough for a historic building?
A standard FCA documents condition and estimates costs based on conventional replacement assumptions. Historic buildings present risks and requirements that fall outside those assumptions — including the pathology of decay in original materials, the compatibility of modern repair materials with historic construction methods, code exemptions and variances that apply to designated structures, and cost multipliers associated with working on buildings that cannot be treated like modern ones. Without accounting for these factors, an FCA for a historic building will underestimate the true cost of renewal and miss risks that could significantly affect budget and timeline.
Is it cheaper to demolish and rebuild than to rehabilitate a historic building?
In most cases, no. Rehabilitation of historic buildings typically costs 16% less than new construction and completes 18% faster. Historic buildings often contain materials — old-growth timber, wrought iron, dense-fired masonry — that are no longer commercially available and would be prohibitively expensive to replicate. Demolition also releases the embodied carbon stored in a building’s materials, adding an environmental cost that a straight financial comparison doesn’t capture.
What makes a building “historic” for the purposes of capital planning?
For capital planning purposes, a building doesn’t need to be formally designated as a historic landmark to require a historic structures approach. Any building typically 50 years of age or older — or constructed with materials or methods that are no longer standard — may require the kind of specialized assessment that a standard FCA doesn’t provide. Formal historic designation adds considerations around approved materials, code exemptions, and available tax credits, but the need for a specialized approach begins with the building’s age and construction type.
How do I make the case to my board for capital renewal investment in a historic building?
The foundation for any capital renewal conversation is consistent and defensible data — a Facility Condition Assessment that documents what you own, what condition it’s in, and what it will cost to operate over its lifecycle. Without it, a board or council can reasonably question or defer any funding request. With it, you have the basis for a conversation that is specific, credible, and hard to dismiss. For guidance on framing that conversation effectively, see Bill Roth’s blog post “Cost or Asset? Before Your Next Board Meeting, Pick Your Word.“
What is the MUSH sector?
MUSH stands for Municipalities, Universities, Schools, and Hospitals — the primary segments of the public sector that manage large, complex building portfolios. MUSH sector organizations typically manage aging infrastructure under significant budget pressure, with high accountability to public stakeholders and limited flexibility in procurement. Roth IAMS works primarily within the MUSH sector.
How does cooperative procurement through Sourcewell or Canoe work for FCA services?
Sourcewell (US) and Canoe (Canada) are cooperative procurement organizations that allow public sector entities to access pre-vetted, competitively awarded contracts without running their own full procurement process. Roth IAMS holds the #1 ranked contract on both Sourcewell and Canoe for facility condition assessment services. Eligible organizations can engage Roth IAMS directly under an existing contract — saving significant time and procurement cost. For organizations facing tight timelines, cooperative procurement can be the difference between having the data you need and not having it in time. Canadian public sector organizations can also access Roth IAMS through OECM, where Roth IAMS holds Platinum Supplier Partner status for Facilities Condition Assessment services.

Still have questions about your portfolio?

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