Is Your FCA Ready for The Real World? An ASHRAE Seminar

February 23, 2023

Recently FOS Director of Products, Mark Schrock, joined forces with Brett Garrett, P.E., Senior Director of Engineering and Infrastructure and University Engineer at The Ohio State University (OSU) to present at the 2023 ASHRAE Winter Conference in Atlanta. We were especially delighted to speak with OSU on the work we have collectively accomplished at the Columbus campus, sharing the successes of this 19 million square footage facility condition assessment (FCA) and subsequent increased funding for their built environment.

Brett Garrett, P.E., Senior Director of Engineering and Infrastructure and University Engineer,
The Ohio State University

Mark Schrock, Director of Products,
FOS of CannonDesign

The seminar itself, “Is Your Facility Condition Assessment Ready for the Real World?” focused on getting an FCA ready for the current economy to ultimately get projects funded through a “collect – decide – act” process. Mark candidly shared from a consultant’s perspective that over the last decade he —

• Has mainly encountered clients that have not properly scoped their RFP. This means they didn’t articulate the necessary data collection and methodology to cover the deferred maintenance and renewal backlog within their FCA, which render the most well-intentioned efforts ultimately ineffective.

• Has successfully consulted with clients to create meaningful capital improvement plans, who did not have the tools or abilities to keep facility data up to date within the FCA’s recommended action-timeframes. This means creatively finding opportunities to apply prioritization and project planning holistically across a portfolio, accounting for additional costs for factors that exist outside the FCA.

This is where Brett came in, adding an operations and management perspective of this real-world application. OSU met the challenges of the “collect – decide – act” processes; Brett described for attendees in detail how their leadership successfully communicated FCA data to the Board of Trustees, helping to secure an adequate funding appropriation to address the collective facility needs. This FCA data directly contributed to the basis for leadership's responsible fiduciary response. OSU is now in the process of expanding and implementing the highest level of facilities management applications, total cost of ownership (TCO). TCO is the advancement of a comprehensive FCA, including suitability, adaptability, “missionality,” energy, environmental, and other enhanced data collection collectives. Paired with the capability of analysis and scenario planning, this leads to understanding the effects of decisions across the built environment with an outlook of up to 60 years!

 The entire idea of the “collect – decide – act” process is foundational to creating a realistic plan within the FCA. Questions were asked of attendees to determine where they might be in their own efforts, and you can probably relate — Do you have too many buildings in your portfolio? Is the portfolio aging without reinvestment? Are you always reactionary when attending to deferred maintenance? Do you relate with annual funding shortfalls?

It’s important to remember that not one size fits all when it comes to FCAs, but it is still the foundational first step. FCAs, when properly scoped and conducted, allow you to establish condition, recommendations for action, vital prioritization, action time frames of deferred maintenance deficiencies, and cost data at the line-item level.

After the FCA it’s important to commit to planning and to communicate a realistic snapshot of your assets in real-time. Data drives results, and your organization’s leadership will support your needs if you can provide empirical data to support where your considerations came from.

Overall, attendees of this seminar were able to walk away having learned how to:

• Identify the types of FCA scope of services available in the industry, the pros and cons of each type, and the considerations necessary to provide a proactive pathway to operations and maintenance management decisions.

• Recognize the characteristics of a rapidly changing O&M environment and how it impacts deferred maintenance deficiencies.

• Understand potential strategies for FCA data collection that allow for more flexible decision making.

• Provide a roadmap to move from data to actual project scopes that are manageable even with tight funding.

Our team was glad to have Brett Garrett from the OSU Facilities Design and Construction team join this seminar, as he was able to share his personal experiences dealing with these challenges on a day-to-day basis. Since OSU started working with Mark and the FOS team, and using our FCA software platform FOScore®, OSU has a different perspective on their assets and it’s changed how they make decisions.  

Want to learn more about how FOS partners with our clients to make sure FCA’s are ready for this economy? Reach out to our team today!