The Challenge

In the Spring of 2001, the University of Arkansas (UARK) undertook a comprehensive review and subsequent reorganization of its Physical Plant Department.  One element of this organizational improvement involved the function of facility portfolio management.  This is the role of maintaining, renewing, and managing the facility assets of the University in support of its educational mission.  Prior to this initiative, the University executed facility portfolio management in much the same manner as its peers.  Reactive maintenance execution and short-term budgeting for renewal characterized this outdated practice.

In 2002, Draper & Associates and the Adams Consulting Group were engaged to conducted a facility condition assessment of the eighty-six E&G facilities on campus and to develop a Facilities Portfolio Management Program. 

The Draper Approach

The facility condition analysis is the baseline for any campus facility renewal initiative.  Typically, a survey of the campus facilities by architects and engineers creates a database and financial model of the renewal needs for the campus.  Universities have conducted facility audits for a number of years.  In the past, these resulted in large lists of deficiencies or projects that summed up to a very large deferred maintenance total.  This cost often created shock or disbelief within the administration and had mixed results.  This practice was replaced at UARK by a more meaningful and realistic approach.  Interviews and facilitated meetings established the performance measures and functional requirements that the campus stakeholders required of their facilities.  These mission support requirements were coupled with the professional requirements of building engineering, architecture, maintenance management and code compliance.  Assessing the campus facilities using this intelligent approach produced performance, condition, and budget data that was specifically linked to the mission of the University and was easily measurable.  This was the foundation of the facility condition analysis that was performed on the University of Arkansas campus.

In order to determine the renewal needs of facilities in terms unique to the campus, standards were developed with input of the three primary stakeholders: the administration, the faculty, and facilities management.  The baseline space standards developed from facilitated meetings included the following:

Each facility and each facility system was assessed using these baseline space standards.  The scores were averaged and summed to yield composite scores for each building.  Consistent with the UARK approach to rationalize the FCA results into actionable data, the buildings were sorted into three categories.  This sorting into categories enabled the appropriate capital planning and funding process to be linked with the applicable buildings.  Treating the building as a “whole entity” (essentially a collection of individual deficiencies), enabled the University to think more strategically about building conditions, rather than tactically.  This “holistic” approach sorted buildings into three categories:  “A” – those buildings which will achieve their full life-cycle through conscientiously applied preventive maintenance and retiring the backlog of deferred maintenance; “B” – those building for which the backlog of deferred maintenance and capital renewal is of such magnitude that the building is a candidate for total renovation; and “C” – those building which were essentially a place-holder for a future building on campus and should be demolished at some point in the future.  Rather than a piece-meal approach of retiring individual deficiencies, the University was able to make strategic decisions on how to best apply limited resources.