It is critical to know the extent to which the buildings, physical assets and systems in your care are performing. Having comprehensive data on all assets, enables Facility Managers to identify where potential opportunities for facility optimization exist.
Previously, we've spoken about the importance of Facility Condition Assessments (FCA) for Healthcare organizations, but let's discuss some of the universal benefits for all types of facilities. Here we discuss the ways in which FCAs can improve your organization's operational efficiency and make your job easier.
Read our guide to implementing a facility optimization strategy >
FCAs enable facility managers to understand how well facilities are equipped to meet the needs of the organization, this year, in the next year, and in five years from now. In terms of best practice, it is essential to standardize the FCA process. It is remains the most useful tool for assessing useful life of an organization's equipment.
Data from FCAs will help your organization:
- Plan for future expenditures
- Predict the useful of equipment and physical assets
- Develop a strategic preventive maintenance program
Why are FCAs important?
Facility Condition Assessments are important because they determine the extent to which a facility is able to meet the intended purpose. Essentially, an FCA is a risk analysis for physical resources and assets.
Learn how FOUNDATION makes it easy to perform facility condition assessments >
The FCA evaluates the current condition of facilities. It determines the probability of physical assets running into issues. FCAs identify the keys to the operation and support structure and determine what will likely be or probably to be an issue and when.
This data enables executives to have a 360-degree view on the status of existing assets across all facilities. FCA data is a valuable tool for long-range planning. It enables executives to make decisions based on comprehensive reports and provides a strategic framework for planning future improvements.
What is the process?
The Facility Condition Assessment begins by taking a comprehensive inventory of facility equipment and related infrastructure. Essentially, this is a list of all equipment and systems. It includes demographic information to help you identify each asset uniquely, such as age, location and capacity.
See how Intellis improved Facility Condition Assessments for the New York Housing Authority >
A good place to start is by defining your organization's mission and aligning the goals of the facility to the organization. Consider how the condition of equipment impacts the facility’s ability to meet the overall needs of the organization.
The results of condition assessments are added to this list as they are completed. Taking the time to develop and maintain this registry is important because it helps to identify what kind of preventive programs your team should employ.
What do you do with the data?
Data from the FCA demonstrates if the facility is currently capable of meeting the defined need. This allows the facility management team to develop a maintenance program specifically for the facility.
Doing this assessment for every piece of equipment will give you a much clearer picture of your facility’s health. It also helps to determine where to target investments.
Data from facility assessments support everyday decision-making that are backed by real-time information and insights. Facility management platforms, like The FOUNDATION Solution, are designed to process the large amount of data collected during a facility assessment and package it into a digestible, simplified, mobile-friendly report that enables you and your management team to quickly make decisions on the fly.
For example, FOUNDATION, offers a dynamic condition model of the organization's entire physical asset portfolio. This enables facility managers to prioritize and categorize assessment data and then integrate it directly into your maintenance and capital project and budgetary planning.
The FOUNDATION Solution take this one step further with its mobile component, which allows your team to stay connected inside and outside of the office.
Learn about the benefits of mobile technology for facility managers >
Our mobile-enabled platform provides you with project overviews, analyses, building biographies, and deficiency condition reports. Furthermore, you can upload photos into the platform directly from the field, as well as add comments and even view estimated repair costs.
What about Preventive Maintenance?
It is important to build ongoing condition assessments into annual preventive maintenance tasks. Track the scores in a maintenance management system, such as FOUNDATION. Automating this part of the process will make everything much easier to track.
Learn more about developing an effective preventative maintenance program >
Ideally, the facility condition assessment feeds directly into asset management and capital planning. Employing an integrated approach ensures that your team always has accurate information about the facility’s ability to meet your organization’s needs. Further, you will have a simplified format that you can show to decision-makers at your organization, which will explain why an aging unit needs to be replaced.
With the help of facility management software, it becomes easier to prioritize and analyze data points from your FCA against health and safety regulations. The FCA is a valuable tool for forecasting budgets and determining long-term investments. Our FOUNDATION Solution can help you to streamline facility condition inspections by providing you with best-in-class workflows and costing libraries that consider industry-wide replacement value benchmarked against deferred maintenance deficiencies. This data enables executives to have a 360-degree view on the status of existing assets across all facilities.
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