February 2023

The Ohio State University (OSU) partnered with FOS to deliver a comprehensive facility condition assessment (FCA) across their Columbus, OH campus. OSU’s portfolio is incredibly diverse with facilities ranging in age from the late 19th century to the present and ranging in complexity from utilitarian pig barns to world-class biomedical research complexes and an iconic 100,000+ seat football stadium. In addition to the nearly 17 million sf assessed by our in-house team at a Uniformat Level 3/5 hybrid (major and minor systems + system components) and asset tagging scope, we also provided assessor training and cost estimating support to a team of OSU’s internal assessors, who covered an additional 3.7 million sf at a Uniformat Level 2 scope. With our support, the OSU internal team will assess an additional 11.6 million sf by the time of project completion.

As a multi-year subscriber to FOSCore®, OSU has fully embraced the tools that we have created for enhancing facility management and planning. In addition to FCA deliverables that have helped the University understand the existing condition of their physical assets, associated deferred maintenance needs, capital renewal liabilities, and the remaining service life of all building systems and their components, OSU has also utilized FOScore®’s suitability (KPI), budgeting/planning, and reporting tools to analyze, manage, and present the FCA data to prepare annual budgets and short- and long-range plans for repair and replacement projects.

We worked with the University to create a tailored approach that prioritized assets within the portfolio and scaled our resources to meet challenging phased deadlines over the course of several years. Using a single dedicated team for data collection and analysis, we were able to assess approximately one million sf per field week, build close relationships with our OSU team partners, and provide unprecedented data quality for their continued usage as multi-year subscribers of our FOScore® data management and capital planning platform.

Our team leveraged the expertise of OSU’s facilities engineering and maintenance staff to enhance our data collection process by drawing from their extensive knowledge of the facilities they care for. No matter how highly esteemed we regard our own abilities to analyze buildings and their systems, there will always be invaluable knowledge about each facility that we will not observe over the course of the day or two that we spend with them. This knowledge is collected over months and years of observation. It is the facility staff, living with the buildings on a daily basis, who hold this knowledge, and so we actively seek it from them to inform our assessments.

Over the course of the assessment, it was discovered that OSU’s previous assessment method was greatly underestimating deficiency across campus. By embracing FOS assessment methods, the University has been able to recalibrate their capital budgeting to more effectively and proactively align with their facility maintenance and planning needs.

This FCA was a wholly collaborative experience with OSU’s passionate, hands-on project team. Our joint efforts led to effective knowledge capture, data collection, deficiency presentation, and facility condition indexing that has set the University on a course toward ever-improving facility conditions.