I had an epiphany. After working from home for years overseeing hundreds of people across time zones, I realized I’m not working from home, I’m living at work.

How about you? Are you managing your facilities or are your facilities managing you?

The key to not being reactive is recognizing the tyranny of urgency will rob you of the opportunity to prioritize.

Asset Management is data-informed science of managing competing pressures through organizational structure.

Bringing in partners with specialty knowledge and technology will help you realize how to maximize asset value.

How would you rate your preparedness related to the challenges of Facility Asset Management? Here is a partial list of Facility Asset Management questions:

• Capital Planning
• Energy Auditing
• Air quality Testing
• Managing Cleaning Contracts
• Improving Accessibility
• Optimizing space utilization
• Contracting for this year’s capital renewal contracts
• Preparing for remodeling
• Preparing for renovation
• Addressing social issues with appropriate facility resources
• Adding electrical capacity to provide for new electric bus fleet
• Improving wireless capacity and remote learning communication systems
• Studying demographics for the coming school year for new students or students leaving for home-schooling and other learning venues.
• Improving security lighting, hardware, cameras, and entry/exit management
• Working on preventative maintenance and work orders
• Training new staff or saying good by to long term staff who are retiring
• Contracting for new projects and services
• Managing leadership and organizational requests coming from the principal, superintendent, or school board.
• Budget preparation for the week, month, year, and beyond
• Managing data on each system
• Returning calls and doing research
• Being prepared for the start of school, a major play, or new athletic event.
• Aligning assets and systems with the mission and goals of the organization

How can Facility Asset Management give you back control over your Facilities

So, what is a Facility Manager to do? It helps to start with a plan. A capital plan that centralizes data on the facility systems. In a state like New Jersey there are approximately 600 school systems. Most have just a few schools to worry about. In states like Florida, there are just 76 school districts with approximately 2,700 schools and 2.6 million students. If you are a school system manager in Florida, the list of 21 questions listed above must now be multiplied by ~35 schools in each district. A facility manager for an average school system is struggling to manage 700 questions for 35 schools on any given day.

What’s a school facility manager to do? A good asset management plan can organize the questions and prioritize the answers so that the who organization can be in alignment and can rest in knowing that assets are being managed in a way that not only optimizes their performance but also saves money, creates a safe and healthy educational environment, and has the future in focus.

If you are weary of the challenges of Facility Asset Management

Imagine a world where your facility asset management and capital plans were based on consistent and defensible data. 

Imagine that there was a way you could have all the data that you need to make informed decisions right at your fingertips. 

Imagine not being stressed that your organization is underfunded and unequipped to deal with the politics and pressures when it comes to capital planning. 

Imagine having the capability to make better business decisions. 

Imagine your organization’s buildings and assets just being…better. 

To take the first step in making this your reality, please consider partnering with Roth IAMS to provide you with the Facility/Building Condition Assessments for your portfolio. We are Colaborative.  We Are Passionate.  We are Constantly Curious. The following is an article written by Roth IAMS staff that explains the Roth approach to Facility Asset Management:

ASSET MANAGEMENT: THE INTERSECTION OF PEOPLE, BUILDINGS AND BUSINESS

“We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us.” (Winston S. Churchill)

This paradigm holds as buildings constitute a significant part of human existence and development as they help provide one of the necessities of life; shelter. Modern society depends on physical assets such as buildings to be effective. They serve a variety of purposes ranging from homes for domestic use, offices for business use, warehouses for industrial uses, schools for education purposes, churches and mosques for religious use, among others, and are the hallmarks of a developed society. The direct and indirect contribution of buildings towards the well-being of a nation cannot be overemphasized, policies that shape the affairs of businesses are made inside the comfort of buildings, and psychological and physiological challenges are tackled inside appropriate buildings. It, therefore, becomes pertinent to ensure that assets are adequately managed.

To put the title of this whitepaper into perspective, it is essential to provide some basic definitions to provide guidance on the key concepts to be discussed: IS0 55000 (clause 3.3.1) provides a basic definition for asset management as “the coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from assets,” where an asset is defined as an “item that has potential or actual value to an organization’ (clause 3.2.1) such as a building.

Over the last decade, there has been an increased focus on asset management, and this places additional demands both on asset managers and organizations wishing to embark on the asset management journey in line with global best practice. Managing physical assets such as buildings to facilitate their full utilization in the present and into the future to support the business case of an organization requires the participation and support of diverse stakeholders, including regulatory agencies. The pertinent question that begs answers, therefore, is “Why does asset management matter and how do buildings support the business case of an organization?”. To answer these questions, it is vital to show the relationship between the principles of asset management (Figure 1). The core tenet of asset management is “People.” Visible and participatory senior-level leadership and commitment drives the asset management process, ensures buy-in from other stakeholders to align organizations strategic goals and the asset management activities delivered by staff to ensure that the building continues to provide value to the organizations business case by either helping the organization provide satisfaction to the building users or provide the organization with some competitive advantage. To achieve or sustain end-user satisfaction in the building performance and provide a competitive advantage to the organization, assurance is required. Assurance is the combination and auditing of processes and outcomes to confirm that the building and its systems are operating as intended to ensure that the building is fulfilling its essential purpose consistently and sustainably over time. One way to achieve this is through Building Condition Assessment (BCA) to help assess how the building is performing and helping to achieve the organizations business case, capital planning and reserve fund studies to ensure that the resources needed to ensure that the building continues to meet requirements are available when the need arises.

The principles of asset management provide the foundation for the intersection of people, buildings and business, but beyond these principles, organizations need to develop their asset management model to suit and support their business case. As a guide, ISO 55001 describes some expected output of an organization’s asset model:

An asset management policy that states the intention and direction of an organization approved by the CEO.

A Strategic Asset Management Plan (SAMP) that specifies how the business objectives are converted into asset management objectives; approved by senior executives

Several Asset Management Plans (AMP) that specify the activities, resources, and timelines to achieve goals; approved by the project manager or asset manager

An asset management system based on these principles and deliverables is a necessary business tool that will help create a smooth intersection between people, buildings, and businesses (Figure 2).

Our mission is to improve the built environment around the world through collaborative development of strategies that integrate maintenance and capital planning. We hope that by sharing our ideas and hopefully starting more conversations on the topic that the global Facility Asset Management profession will be able to increase the value of their assets for the benefit of their stakeholders and users.

For more information on how we are helping clients, just like you develop integrated asset management strategies, please do not hesitate to contact us!