Deferred maintenance is a challenge plaguing many colleges and universities around the country. As funding tightens, the facilities department is typically among the first required to make do with less funding. This is in part because the facilities department needs are often less visible than the competing needs of faculty salaries and financial aid. However, putting off necessary maintenance today ultimately leads to more severe — and more expensive — problems tomorrow that could impact a facility’s ability to effectively compete.

A maintenance backlog can seem overwhelming when approached as a whole, particularly if the maintenance has been deferred for some time. But when facilities managers categorize their projects, they can create a prioritization system that helps them to balance the various needs, and budgets, of different projects. You can prioritize projects by putting each into one of three categories that indicates the level of damage caused by deferred maintenance. This system also benefits facilities managers who must make an easily digestible case to those financial stakeholders who will make the ultimate decision about whether or not to invest in maintenance projects.

Shifting from New to Existing Facilities

Until recently, many higher-education institutions have focused their attention primarily on adding new facilities to their campuses. These institutions have viewed adding buildings designed to meet the latest expectations as the most visible way to attract leading faculty and the brightest students. However, this investment often comes at the expense of existing buildings. This can be especially problematic when the school leadership doesn’t take into account the long-term maintenance investment that will be necessary to support their new facilities, on top of existing maintenance needs.

There are two types of costs associated with maintenance, both of which must be considered.

• Keep-up costs: Describes the ongoing annual investments necessary to keep buildings performing properly and able to perform during their full useful life.

• Catch-up costs: Describes those charges that come as a result of the accumulation of repair projects that have been deferred as well as any modernization improvements necessary for the facility to perform competitively.

When new construction is prioritized over maintenance for improvements to existing buildings, catch-up costs often grow unwieldy. At some point, however, these costs must be addressed in order to prevent a significant breakdown.

The alternative is to wait until systems suffer a catastrophic failure, at which point the expense and frequency of emergency repair costs will grow far beyond the budget you can plan for today.

Classifying your projects according to these costs will help in your prioritization of capital investments. But there are other factors you can use to prioritize the greatest need for maintenance attention.

3 Criteria for Evaluations

Not all buildings or building needs are equal. And this is a good thing, as presenting financial decision-makers with an overwhelming list of project needs, rather than a clearly prioritized list of items to address over time, is a surefire way to cut short the funding conversation. Consider the following three factors to help evaluate your projects and determine how quickly their needs must be addressed:

1. Condition: The degree of impact the deferred maintenance has had on the overall performance of a facility will of course be the most pressing concern. Some facilities will show immediate need for refurbishment, while others may be able to continue operating for several more years with only moderate upkeep. Others may be ready for tear down to make way for new construction. An assessment should include details about how well the building is performing and list its most immediate and long-term needs.

2. Function: Those buildings that play the greatest role in helping an institution achieve its overarching mission should take a lead on the list of facilities in need of maintenance. Consider whether or not a proposed project supports the institution’s goals and/or improves its financial performance. If the answer is yes, then this is a high-priority project.

3. Impact of Improvements: Will proposed improvements be visible to staff or students? Will they present savings that in some way reduce spending? Maintenance improvements that are likely to leave a tangible impact should lead on your priority list.

By determining which projects meet one or more of the criteria above, facility managers can begin to put in place a plan that will, over time, demonstrate a clear path to campus improvement.

To read the entire article, check out the July/August issue of School Construction News.

Jay Pearlman is associate vice president, marketing, at Guilford, Conn.-based Sightlines, an expert on facility planning.

The post How to Reduce Excessive Deferred Maintenance appeared first on School Construction News.

While there may not be much a facilities manager doesn’t know about the buildings on an institution’s campus, knowledge of the college or university budget is generally an altogether different matter. Yet when many facilities managers approach campus executives and board members with requests for added funding, they expect those financial and administrative decision makers to immediately understand why facilities funding must come before other requests.

It’s no wonder that backlogs across many higher education campuses are growing as maintenance is deferred. To successfully secure funding for improvements, facilities managers are best served by taking a closer look at how they communicate requests. By speaking the right language, facilities managers may offer more convincing arguments — and see funding requests granted more often.

Defining the Shared Problem

Too often, facilities managers describe funding needs by explaining (sometimes in exhaustive technical detail) the nature of a problem. That’s often the first communication breakdown.

A college president or university board of trustees is most concerned about the impact a problem will have on the campus and the university’s overall mission. Instead of highlighting the problem itself, facility managers may want to convey the consequences that could be felt if the problem isn’t solved. Campus executives and board members need enough information about facilities requests to evaluate and fund them. Information shared with these professionals should convey the risks of failing to act as well as the positive results of completing a project.

Improving Communication Channels

The following three steps can help facility managers to more effectively communicate facility needs and concerns:

1. Define a clear set of priorities that can help executives understand the relative urgency of each project. Begin by assessing needs. These are key takeaways which can provide financial and administrative decision makers with the facts they need to objectively consider the situation. Categories might include repairs, maintenance needs and improvement costs.
2. Challenge every technical term. An insider’s knowledge doesn’t impress anyone, and it certainly doesn’t make an argument more convincing — just as switching to a broader discussion in layman’s terms doesn’t mean an audience isn’t shrewdly considering the solutions to the stated problems. Step back from overuse of jargon and ask if there is a layman’s term that might work instead. If not, will someone with limited facilities background understand the term? If not, provide a brief definition. Data, in particular, can help in these conversations as it shows definitively the nature of a problem or how a facility compares to peers — and how a solution can provide a competitive edge.
3. Discuss facilities needs in the context of the institution’s mission. Pinpoint the areas that most concern decision makers when it comes to campus improvements. Outline needs in terms of how a repair or other investment would impact the institution’s ability to perform its mission. How exactly does the institution benefit from an investment into the maintenance backlog? If the answer seems obvious, remember that it might only be obvious to those entrenched in these problems day-in and day-out. Help executives understand how a project will deliver a return on the money they invest.

Stop the Confusion

By communicating problems through a shared financial vocabulary, facility managers can ultimately eliminate confusion that could hinder the urgency of funding requests. Developing a shared vocabulary can be a challenge. But it can also be a strong first start toward gaining an ally among university decision makers.

Peter Reeves is an associate director of member services at Sightlines and currently is responsible for service delivery of the operations teams in the Pennsylvania and Oregon offices. 

The post 3 Communication Tactics to Bolster a Facilities Budget appeared first on School Construction News.

Should the district approve the move, LVDLCS would complete a variety of work on the soon-to-be-vacated space, adding new bathrooms, a kitchen and cafeteria to the existing School for the Arts building. Work would also include converting a theater into a gym and removing practice rooms to increase classroom sizes. Upon completion, the relocated school will contain 19 regular education classrooms, a dedicated area for learning support students and a section for English Language Learners.

However, in its efforts to relocate, the LVDLCS has encountered several legal roadblocks. For example, the building’s current lease states that the building owner is responsible for soliciting bids and hiring out construction work, which would be funded by the charter school. The school would be required to pay 100 percent of construction costs up front, after which it would receive a 50 percent rebate on rent.

Bethlehem Area School District Superintendent Joseph Roy, who has requested a legal review of this case, told Lehigh Valley Live that the charter school is using taxpayer dollars to pay for construction projects that haven’t been bid in compliance with state laws governing public school construction.

"It is skirting the law," Roy said of the school. "It may be doing that legally.”

As for LVDLCS’s defense, the charter school has agreed to comply with a legal review to make sure everything is being done according to regulations, announced school principal, Lisa Pluchinsky.

Providing the legal teams involved can agree on the lease language, the school’s relocation and expansion may soon be ready for a board vote, Roy said.

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