I just wrapped up a two-month series of posts on the evolution of the Facility Condition Assessment (FCA) practice. Throughout the series I mentioned a few times that an FCA does not provide you with a capital plan, but instead a list of needs. I thought I would further explain myself a bit, since I still see many RFPs and have many conversations with clients asking to do an FCA to provide a 10-Year Capital Plan.

An FCA, or any other engineering assessment is going to generally recommend very focused, element-level changes or improvements to a building. Replace the roof because it is leaking, repair the foundation to avoid water penetration, upgrade your boiler to a more energy-efficient model. Your engineering partner will provide you with a list of things that you could consider doing, with justification. However, for those that have limited budgets/resources (and by that, I mean everyone), doing everything that is recommended is just not possible.

In general, it likely wouldn’t even make sense to do everything recommended in a report. After all, it is a bunch of options put together by someone outside your organization. Additionally, as your consultant, who am I to make the executive decision about what you are actually going to do. I may be knowledgeable but simply will not have the same knowledge and understanding of your internal goals and objectives to make the most effective investment decisions.

Available funding is also clearly going to come into play. You may have $10 Million in needs, but only $2 Million to spend. Having a plan that includes money that you don’t have isn’t much of a plan at all.

It is critical for organizations to understand that any third-party report is only going to give you a list of needs, based on the type of project it is. In order to turn that list of needs into a Capital Plan, you must understand:

• How much budget you expect to have;
• What internal/external resources will be available to execute the plan;
• How you will prioritize which needs get included;
• How you can bundle needs into Projects and Programs (I see another future post on the difference between these two!); and
• How far into the future you are going to plan (Another idea for a future post). 

I hope that this will help you and your organization recognize the difference between a list of needs and a capital plan and make sure you are clear on what you are expecting on your assessment projects. The clearer you are, the easier it will be to evaluate and select the best possible collaborator to work with.