Facility Stewardship
Healthy and well-maintained facilities are integral to your mission.
All buildings require regular attention to ensure that they function properly and retain long-term viability. Aside from regular annual maintenance a significant challenge to proper stewardship of a facility is identifying, planning for and addressing deferred maintenance projects. Typically these needs occur on a cycle of 3-10 years and are generally outside of maintenance covered by annual operating expenses. Some projects may also require work by multiple subcontractors and even involve trade or building permits.
Understanding how to effectively and efficiently identify, track, and budget for these needs is important to ensure that small scale projects do not become significant concerns that can impact your ability to use your facilities. Recognizing that your facilities are an integral component of your primary mission is key to integrating a deferred maintenance program in a way that is beneficial and sustainable. Contact us to discuss how we could work with you towards improving an approach to stewardship.
We use three main tools to help identify and plan to address your facility needs:
Facility Conditions Assessment, Space Use Analysis, and Reserve Study.
Buildings can be the backdrop for activity and life over many years, connecting us to the history and meaning of place.
Facility Condition Assessment:
A tool to take stock of the current condition of buildings and grounds.
In addition to identifying existing building components, systems, site elements, etc., this study will also look at life-safety and accessibility measures in your facility relative to current code requirements. The result of this study can also include recommendations for upgrades, like replacing radiators and window units with a central air system, and what the return on investments in upgrades might be. In basic terms this assessment would help you identify how to plan for upgrades that would bring the facility more in line with a new building.
Space Use Analysis:
A tool to understand how you currently use facilities.
This study collects information about programs you currently have (or would like to have) and what space needs and resources are needed to support them. As part of this analysis we will identify and quantify these needs. This study is also a chance to look at areas that were originally intended for one purpose, but are now underutilized because of changing needs.
Reserve Study:
A financial planning tool that helps you understand how much you should be saving & spending annually to maintain your facilities and how much you should have in reserves for deferred maintenance.
This assessment will identify types, ages and conditions of existing building components, building systems, and site elements to determine associated costs for repair or replacement. They will also identify the timeframe when these elements will have reached their limit and will need repair or replacement. This kind of condition-based financial information is helpful for budgeting annual operation and maintenance costs, annual funding to reserves, peak years when you could expect to have large expenses from multiple projects, and realistic projections for long-term needs that can be used for planned giving efforts or capital campaigns.
