While Cardwell regularly engages with his school-board members and other budget influencers in the community, he felt more comfortable that the necessary funding would come through after his findings were backed up by a neutral, third-party assessment.
“When you start talking about big numbers to fix things, even with a good relationship, people will say, ‘Jeff, you’re just the COO, you don’t have a degree in all these areas,’ so, I bring a specialist in that can confirm what I’m saying. I gave them a picture at 3,000 feet, and they brought it down to 10 feet.
“It’s a stamp of approval that this group, who has no affiliation with us, has no skin in the game and they’re here to say this is what we found here, and here’s the evidence to back it up.”
The results of an assessment, when made public and also presented to stakeholders, can make all the difference in receiving funding as it provides an open book to the condition of the buildings in question.
“I think when we’re talking about transparency with our community, it’s important that we’re showing our due diligence and being very honest about the state of our systems,” says Teresa Neff-Webster, chief of operations at North Clackamas Schools outside Portland, Oregon. “It says we’re willing to put a microscope up to that work, to say we’re doing the smart, efficient, effective and financially appropriate work to ensure that we’re maintaining our sites long term.”
Washington also endorses using a third party for assessments for those reasons but adds because the process can be long and tedious for operations staffs that are often already stressed.
“It’s a significant amount of work,” she says. “Somebody coming in and tagging and assessing every single piece of equipment in your building is a huge lift and there is still reconciliation that has to happen, with our internal teams to make sure the information that has been collected by the third-party engineers and others is accurate.”
While school districts stand to benefit from assessments, facility executives understand the costs associated with them. And not only are the actual assessments costly, but the components FCAs typically focus on happen to rank among the more expensive systems in a building to both maintain and upgrade.
“It is boilers, it is roofs, it is HVAC systems and ensuring that they are maintained at a level that will create a safe space,” says Neff-Webster.
Once the data is compiled and assets assessed, it’s up to the facility executives to prioritize projects and convince the chief financial officer and school board of the projects worth investing in.
“You need to be really clear about what your goals are as a district,” Neff-Webster says. “Because there is so much data out there, you need to be able to determine what five things are priorities and are key to understanding our needs, and that’s going to vary across districts’ size and age of buildings.”
For Baltimore City Schools, the data compiled from an FCA paid dividends in state funding. The assessment helped show the aging state of their HVAC systems and Baltimore got the funding it needed.
“They are very instrumental in telling the story,” Washington says. “We have been able to secure additional funding for our infrastructure because of the story we were able to tell with the assessment. We were able to secure funding.
“Our HVAC systems were older than most other systems in the state. ... The FCA provided us with the ability to advocate for more resources.”
Dave Lubach is executive editor for the facilities market. He has a decade of experience writing about facility management and maintenance issues.
Benefits of Facility Condition Assessments
Benefits of a Third-party Facility Condition Assessment
