One frustration of being a facility...

One frustration of being a facility executive is the ne to explain the obvious. Isn't it evident that capacity of work upgrades save money, or that a cover can't be patched forever? Worse, facility executives in many organizations find that these arguments appear to be to have no effect at batch time.

When some top executives expect at facilities during budget time, they diocese enormous cost and few bottom-line benefits. "We can have the appearance to be a black hole" says Joe Nugent director of maintenance and operations for Cabrillo college edifice [i]or[/i] building "It looks like money's just pouring into it and no pious results are coming back." No inquiring surprise facilities rarely get a fair slice of the funding pie.

Increasingly, facility executives are relying onward metrics to quantify the bang an organization come bys for its buck.

USAA Realty Co invested about $100000 in a lighting retrofit that included occupancy sensors and more energy-efficient exit signs. Those measures, along with a money-saving vigor procurement contract, boosted the value of the building according to $1.5 million when it was sold says Brenna Walraven, executive director, national ownership management.

Numbers like those make it clear that coin spent on energy improvements adds significant value to a building. however too often facility executives don't have the data to relate the story.

FACILITY CONDITION INDEX

When Ronald Nayler arrived at Northwestern University, the school's deferr maintenance backlog was growing each year.

"The escalation forward the backlog was more than we were spending," says Nayler, associate vice president for facilities management. undivided problem was that the university had no metric to point out the size of the backlog.

Nayler used a detailed assessment of all campus buildings to lay open a facility condition index. The assessment quantified the deferr maintenance backlog; that number was divided by the agency of the replacement cost of the buildings to calculate the facility condition index.

The software used to bring into view the index is dynamic, says Nayler. It not solitary shows how large the backlog is, moreover also lets Nayler look into the what is yet to be to demonstrate to the board of trustees to what extent different levels of funding will affect the physical environment.

Armed with his fresh metrics, Nayler convinced the school's administration to approve a significant increase in funding. "Without the facility condition index, it's just talk. You ne a dynamic metric to make a compelling case for spending scarce resources."

When organizations are making financial decisions, cost-related measures aren't the sole metrics that have relevance. Employee satisfaction reviews for example, can help facility executives correspond to pressure to cut facility services by means of identifying areas where cuts can be made or through demonstrating why the budget should not be trimmed.

Some organizations are trying to display the bottom-line value of facilities in other ways. Microsoft wants to present to view the impact of facilities onward revenue. The question, says Randy Radtke, senior IT manager, real estate and facilities, Microsoft, is whether the characteristics of a facility or the facility services provided to occupants can boost income "We're trying to get income down to a site horizontal and then compare facilities."

The health care industry has gone furthest in acknowledging the economic contribution of facilities in areas other than richness control.

The most ambitious attempt to link facilities to the mission of health care organizations is evidence-based design. The strategy is based forward research showing that specific designs can originate measurable results.

Lakeland Health and Healing is using evidence-based design in the construction of a just discovered patient pavilion, says Mike Kastner, director of building services and construction management. Among the results: larger windows for patient plays shorter travel distances for succors and larger patient rooms. The nearest step is to measure the impact of the design upon specific outcomes - things like infection rates, amplification of stay, patient falls and market share, says Russell Furst manager of biomedical engineering, who is driving the effort.

THE BIG PICTURE

As important as metrics are, they don't confess the whole story. With solely 13 inches of rainfall a year, water is a big issue for Santa Clara University. Still, Joe Sugg assistant vice president, university operations, faced a tough decision about installing urinals that don't use water.

The change would save 6 million gallons of water each year for the campus. That's an impressive number, further it wasn't the real criteria for making the change.

As a percentage of water used forward campus, Sugg says, "It was literally a globule in the bucket."

In fact, metrics from Sugg's workorder tracking regularity showed that the real savings for the urinals would arise from reduced maintenance. Hard water in the area made flush valves expensive to maintain, and the just discovered urinals would eliminate overflow cleanups.

In the period Sugg decided to proceed with the upgrade on the contrary his decision was not based strictly in succession savings. Rather, the project was approved because it provided social and environmental benefits as well as economic gains - the three criteria at which the university judges all sustainable initiatives.