When was the last time your buildings underwent a facility condition assessment? If it’s been more than five years, you’re due for this highly valuable service.
Facility condition assessments are a tool to help building owners prioritize repairs, replacements, upgrades, and modernization projects, and “essentially put together a plan of what it’s going to take to keep this building operating for the short term, mid-term and long term,” explained Matt Munter, executive vice president, technical assessments, for Bureau Veritas, a provider of testing, inspection, and certification services. “Typically, for us, an owner is looking at a 10-year action window. They want to know, ‘What am I going to have to put back into this building to keep it functioning?’”
What a Facility Condition Assessment Involves
A facility condition assessment breaks down the building into its component parts—the roof, the envelope, and so on. Each component is inspected in great detail, and inspectors will make recommendations and rank priorities based on their findings.
“We’ll look at roofing and say, ‘Hey, this roofing is 10 years old. What can we do to extend the life of this? Here’s what it would cost, the life extension, and the replacement you’re looking at that you need to budget for,’” Munter said. “We do that for probably 100 building components for each building.”
Components in need of immediate interventions are flagged for the owner, Munter said. For example, a roof that feels bouncy when the engineer walks on it has water under the membrane, and it needs to be replaced immediately because it will cause damage to the rest of the building. On the other hand, a roof that only has a few cracks, bubbles, or blisters could potentially be patched to prolong the roof’s lifecycle.
“Every boiler, air conditioning unit, window system, and fire alarm system, we’re trying to determine, is this system at the end of life? Is there an intervention that could extend the life, and what is the priority for that?” Munter said. “If the boiler is near end of life, a typical part of a facility assessment is flagging; is there a more efficient boiler out there? Would it cost more than the regular boiler, and would it save us money if we bought the expensive, efficient boiler anyway? We’re helping the client to over-under on when it makes sense to do these repairs in the grand scheme of things where they’re comparing multiple buildings and multiple priorities against each other.”
3 Tips for Hiring an Assessment Team
Most building owners and managers will bring in an outside firm to conduct the facility condition assessment for an unbiased review, but it’s crucial that you partner with the right firm for your needs. Think about these three considerations when you’re hiring a company to do your assessments.
1. Has the firm done this kind of work before? “We sometimes see firms that specialize in other areas that aren’t really set up to do this kind of work at scale,” Munter said.
2. Can the firm work with your data? “Are you running a work order software system, and has the firm had experience getting their data into whatever software system you’re using?” Munter asked. “Make sure you’re asking if the firm has experience with your software so they won’t break your existing work order system.”
3. What will be asked of you as an owner? “It’s going to be most successful if you’re a vested participant in the process,” Munter advised. “We’ve seen projects where the owner didn’t have a solid engagement with the team, and then they weren’t really happy with the results.”
Building owners need to be involved in the beginning, middle, and end of a facility condition assessment, but the nature of their involvement will evolve as the assessment proceeds, Munter said.
In the beginning: “You really need to engage with your third-party firm and get them all the data you’ve got on the buildings, the work order system, the building management system, any third-party reports you’ve done, and really get with the consultant,” Munter said.
In the middle: “In the middle of the project, the team is going to need you to help them get through the building,” Munter said. “That doesn’t mean they’ll need you to hold their hand for eight hours a day, but they need somebody knowledgeable about the building that can get access to all the mechanical areas. That takes some planning and involvement on the side of the client, especially if you’re in an environment where scheduling is necessary.”
At the end: “You’ve been delivered a bunch of reports in a database. How are you going to review that with the consultant so everyone can live with the final results?” Munter said. “If there’s solid feedback, that report set can be customized to be high-value for the client for the long term.”
A single pilot project at the outset can help you ensure the firm you’ve selected is a good fit for the rest of your portfolio, Munter added. Another helpful step is to review the scope of work before that pilot project and make sure everyone is on the same page about the deliverables.
“A scope of work review with the consultant is sitting down with the client and saying, ‘Let’s read through your scope again and make sure we’re all shaking hands on what it is that we’re out to accomplish and the level of detail we’re bringing back,’” Munter said. “Are we bringing back [the] make, model, and serial number of each piece of equipment so it talks to your work order system, or are we doing system-level estimates? The biggest recommendation I’ve got is a scope review and a single deliverable. Make sure it’s exactly what you’re looking for before you let the team roll out and look at the rest of the buildings.”
