Institutional benefits:

The FCA program is a valuable and effective tool for managing assets to assure that the university can meet the academic mission, without becoming a financial burden. The FCA program focuses on identifying needs, establishing project scopes and budgets, prioritizing the projects, and then funding those that are critical to the operation of the university. By focusing funds on the most critical needs we can address the deferred maintenance backlog systematically. By including FCA data in the capital planning process the building condition reports provide a tool for identifying which buildings should receive major renovations. This has resulting in the retirement of a large portion of our deferred maintenance backlog via capital construction and continues to improve the condition of our overall campus.

By expanding the FCA program to include hundreds of users at every level; including operations and maintenance staff, architects, engineers and planners, safety, health and risk management department, and university administrators, we’ve successfully developed a tool that is useful to all of them. With hundreds of individuals involved we can maintain an up-to-date database using in-house staff without it being a burden to staff or budget. The benefits of the FCA program greatly exceed the small amount time invested by the individual users.

Upon completion of our building assessment surveys and the compiling of our FCA database in 2000 we found ourselves facing a deferred maintenance backlog that seemed insurmountable. With the magnitude of the backlog it was essential that we consider all funding options for addressing the problem. The most obvious was our active capital program. Presentations were developed using FCA data to present a case that all deferred maintenance items be addressed as part of every renovation. Administration agreed and made it policy that all renovations with project cost of over $500,000 include FCA projects in their scopes. This policy has lead to the successful funding of $240 million in FCA projects via an active capital program and is the single largest contributor to retiring our backlog.

Characteristics that make our program different:

We’ve developed and implemented several practices, processes, procedures and policies which make our FCA program stand out as leader. These include our reporting and modeling tools for budgeting, our multi-level team approach, our processes for keeping our data up-to-date, and our prioritization process. Each of these has played a role in the overall success of our FCA program.

The capital component of our FCA program has resulted in significant decrease in our backlog for renovated spaces. It does not however address the concerns regarding high priority projects in buildings which are not scheduled for major renovation. To address these needs we turned our focus to the highest priority projects. We set a goal to retire all priority 1 & 2 projects in a five-year period. By definition the priority 1 & 2 projects are all critical to the operation of the university. We developed a five-year model that details all anticipated infrastructure expenses over the coming five-years and all anticipated funding for the same period. This tool is useful for establishing infrastructure budgets to meet our needs. Trending this model over time provides a map for high priority backlog.

We have developed in-house teams consisting of architects, engineers, maintenance staff, risk management, and health and safety staff to review and validate the data. These teams are organized by category, i.e. ADA, Electrical, Elevators, Exterior, Fire/Safety, HVAC, Interiors, Plumbing, Roofs and Site. Each team is comprised of the individuals that are considered to be the most knowledgeable in their assigned category. The mission of these teams is to validate project scope, establish project cost and prioritize the projects within their assigned category.

FCA data must be accurate and up-to-date for it to be useful as a planning tool. By involving hundreds of individuals across campus we obtain continuous input helping us keep the FCA data current. With the input of knowledgeable individuals that are familiar with our buildings it simplifies the process of keeping the data up-to-date. We this approach we have been successful at keeping the data current without the painstaking effort, and cost, of resurveying our campus.

We have established prioritization criteria so that we can successfully extract the highest priority projects from the database and target our limited resources to those needs. By standardizing criteria we have a tool for prioritizing projects in all categories. Our criteria are based on a single question; what is the risk if we don’t do the project and it fails?

• Will someone get hurt?
• Will it impact the operation?
• Is this a chronic problem?
• What will be impacted? … Operating rooms, patient care, research, labs, classrooms, offices, etc.
• Will it result in collateral damage? … How much?
• Will the time to fix after the failure be unacceptable? … How long?
• Is the building scheduled for renovation and if so, can the need wait?
• What is the likelihood it will fail?
• Will project result in reduced maintenance or energy consumption?
• Is it in a highly visible area?

This criterion has been used successfully for prioritizing needs on campus and targeting funds to the most critical needs.

How this program can be used by others:

We've shared the success of our FCA program with several of our colleagues to assist them in launching similar FCA programs on their campuses. Our solid team approach and tools for prioritizing, our multi-level program involvement, our policies, processes and procedures that we've implemented, and the reporting tools and funding models that we have developed are all practices that others can model after to achieve similar success. In keeping with the University of Michigan's fight song… our FCA program is truly one of “the leaders and best”.

Our team approach to validating, estimating and prioritizing projects has proved to be an effective approach. Establishing teams, by category, made up of members that are very familiar with campus conditions adds credibility to our prioritization process. Utilizing staff members adds validity to the process and minimizes the cost to administer the program.

By utilizing the knowledge of hundreds of staff members on campus, and developing processes and procedures we've been successful at building a program that does not require significant effort by those involved and is not a financial burden. We've found that the more involved our staff is the better the overall quality of the data.

By establishing criteria for prioritizing projects it has given us a tool for making decisions on what to fix and in what order. These criteria can be useful to others make difficult decisions as to what gets funded. The criteria also helps us develop our five-year model with regards to which projects need to be addressed in the near term.

Our FCA data has been used to develop long term replacement models for major components on campus including chillers, roofs and elevators. These models have become the tools for prioritizing and budgeting replacements of these major components. These models have proven to be a useful tool in planning replacements and establishing funding levels years in advance.

We have used our facility condition needs index (FCNI) values at the building level to develop a prioritized list of buildings that are in need of major renovation or demolition. By using FCA data we can determine which of our buildings are in the worst condition. This data is used by the capital planning committee as they consider future construction projects. By demolition of our worst buildings, or by major renovations of them, we've greatly reduced our backlog. Administrators must address aging facilities as part of their capital plan. They must either address infrastructure as part of major renovations or tear down the old when building new buildings.