Decoding Strategic Asset Management

Hello. I you may have noticed in my title slide here that I added a word. I added facilities asset management, and I did that on purpose because there have been a lot of discussions happening lately about what exactly is an asset. So don't worry. I'm gonna get to that in this slide deck. So, as he said, the q and a function is available. If you wanna put in any questions throughout this presentation, I will answer them at the end, but if there's anything that comes up that needs an answer right away, I'll try to answer it as well. So, there we go. This is me. My name is Katie Grimajo. I have my CEFP with APA. I'm the senior industry marketing manager for education at Brightly, but I used to be a client of Brightly, formerly School Dude. I was the director of operations at the Windward School in New York, which is in White Plains and Manhattan, and the director of sustainability scheduling and operations because we know schools have creative titles like Campbell Hall School in Los Angeles prior to that. So we all work in school facilities or operations or something adjacent to that. That's why we're here, and we know the current state of facilities is not ideal. What is it? I won't read all of this to you, but just to give you some facts on where we're at, there's a deferred maintenance backlog that we all probably have, and we don't have the funds to address it or maybe not even the staff. And the what we know is that an educational system is struggling with attracting students if it's somewhere that is a private institution that needs enrollment or even a public institution that needs students to move to a district that's a good district. Recent changes in student preferences and aging infrastructure is really forcing our finance teams and our maintenance teams to step up their game and try to maintain facilities despite limited budgets. So some of the key points in some of my research that I found is there's a thirty six percent deficit in the budget and a hundred and twelve billion dollar backlog in maintenance for US higher ed facilities. Common deferred maintenance issues are leaky roofs, outdated HVAC systems, aging electrical panels. About twenty percent of our maintenance staff are nearing retirement age. And not only are we having less money to replace them with, but they are taking a lot of our valuable knowledge with them. And on top of that, thirty eight percent of students say that facilities condition affects their school choice, and most facilities data is not centralized or up to date. A lot of us are not using facilities in the most optimal way to keep all of our data where it needs to be. So school finance leaders, we need to maximize our data, our funding, and we need to substantiate budget requests. If we are trying to juggle our everyday maintenance tickets, facilities problems, How do we do that and still think towards the future? First of all, many teams that I know, and I tried to help when I was working with them, are using old outdated manual systems. So, hopefully, it's at least an Excel spreadsheet in a computer, but if it's not, it might be filing cabinets and handwritten notes and vendor receipts. So that is very inefficient and leads to a lot of problems as you have new staff, which leads me to my next point, lack of historical data records. How do we keep our historical data? How do we make sure that when a staff retires and new ones come in, you don't have to track down all the permits, the plans, the building drawings. You have it in one centralized place. As schools grow, very often, the support staff is the last to grow. So you have teams that are trying to communicate smoothly and in a timely manner with day to day maintenance, work order requests, and large scale facilities repairs, and you're talking to your client who or your customer, who is your peer, which is faculty and staff, students, anyone that's trying to make a request from you. And how do you have real time data? How do you have access to what's going on in your facilities quickly, easily, and possibly remotely while you're not there, while you're in a different building? So we can talk about the two different kinds of budgets that we're all focused on. There's the day to day, the operational budget, which is our regular maintenance overhead to run the school, utilities, salaries, that sort of thing. If you're in facilities, obviously, you focus on that operational budget, I would say, probably the most. But the next thing that you're asked to help with often is the capital budget. That's where your finance leaders need to plan ahead for long term project expenditures and what investments are worth pursuing and when. So when that comes to school facilities, that would include investment in new buildings and construction, critical health safety improvements, physical asset management, purchases of land, buildings, new equipment, and replacing large scale equipment. So when your finance leader, whether at a school or government or any other corporation, comes to you and says, what are your capital budget projections? How do you do that? How do you come up with that information? So as promised, what is that asset that we're managing? But there seems to be a lot of confusion about that. What is an asset? Some people immediately think financial assets, which is one type of asset. Other people might think small scale assets, like we're managing little barcode stickers on all the laptops. That is an asset, but that's a small scale asset. Or a giant large scale asset, which would be what a whole land parcel, a whole real estate transaction, like, owning the entire building, which in certain public schools, that may be covered by the government, that may not be something that you handle. It's not necessarily that facilities maintenance level. So what I'm focusing on when I say asset is those middle ground facilities assets, which are HVAC systems, roofing, electrical systems, plumbing. And when you have an effective asset management plan, it goes beyond just your inventory, but it includes proactive planning and management of all your building systems. So that will eventually lead to long term costs and savings and better risk management. So how do you manage these assets and your future capital plan? What do we need to do? It is not an easy feat. The analogy I often use, and just for my own personal edification, is that when you wanna know what you need to do, how do you know that you're getting the right data? How do you know what it is? If you take your car into a mechanic and they say, oh, you gotta get all these repairs done, and I don't know anything about cars, then I just trust him and say or her and say, let's get that done. You said it's important. I'm gonna do it. How do we get beyond that and make sure we have the data to prove that what we wanna focus on is what we need to spend and when? So when we have aging infrastructure, we have a lot of complex needs and a lot of things failing at the same time. So we really need strategic planning to use our limited budget to the best of our ability. And in order to do that, it's easy to say, okay. Short term cost. This one keeps breaking. This unit keeps breaking. That's gonna be the first thing I spend on. But the longer term in predicting what's going to fail when and when that spend has to come is the challenge. The way to do that is data. How do you get that data? Well, I'm gonna talk to you about that. So if you have thorough data of your asset conditions, that will help you justify your budgeting choices. It makes you it makes it easier for you to justify your requests and defend your decisions about what needs to be tackled first without that emotional component of you picked your favorite campus or your favorite place to repair because that's where your office is. It takes that out because you have data. Condition data is your best friend. It gives you crucial insights on your short term and long term planning, and will tell you the exact state of your assets so that you can plan to budget more efficiently. Strategic asset management is a term we hear a lot, and what that just means is thinking ahead, planning ahead for your maintenance and operations using asset life cycle modeling and helping you plan in advance. So how do we shift to a more proactive approach and make your facilities management more efficient and less reactive? Step one, the easy step, asset information. We need data. Where do we get it? To help you navigate this journey and the steps that you would have to take to true strategic asset management, we have this fancy pyramid that will help you lay out which direction you need to go in. So think of it as a road map and how do you advance on it. The first thing we do is we get our asset information, and the easiest way to do that is a facilities condition assessment or an FCA. Most of you probably have one. I see a quick question. Yes. PowerPoint will be sent out at the end of this, so don't worry. You will get it. The facilities condition assessment is all about understanding all of your assets, everything in your building, and what their current condition is. So my most likely, you're in reactive maintenance, and we need to work our way up. Most schools, at least, and probably government entities are required to do facilities condition assessments every five years or so. If you're not required, you should still do one in best practice as often as you have the budget to do one. And, realistically, you could do one yourself. You could do it internally if you have the team that truly knows your buildings and your assets and has the dedicated time for all of this data input. But, realistically, if you have an engineering firm that's able to help you, they'll be giving you an even more detailed report. So it will help you make informed decisions about your assets and where they currently are. The engineering professionals will go around. They'll evaluate the structure, the HVAC, the plumbing, the electrical, and they'll essentially give you a giant document or binder or PDF going over everything, kind of like when you buy a house and you get an assessment of the house. It's the same idea. It covers your building envelopes, your mechanical systems, electrical, plumbing, fire. But what do you do when you have that? The problem is most people get it, and then they have a document, and then they have to update it themselves or put that data somewhere. So you have a static document that's obsolete almost immediately because you are already making changes. It says you need to fix something. Your team's gonna go fix it. And then when the next person looks at this report, they're gonna say, oh, this is still broken, and it's not because you fixed it. So you could make your own spreadsheet and do it yourself, but there's a better way. We call this tactical asset management. What are you gonna do with that data once you have it? This is all about optimizing your daily operations. So you have the data. You wanna reduce downtime in all of your equipment. You wanna improve your customer service and respond to work orders as fast as possible, and you wanna be proactive in your maintenance so that you have less reactive problems to deal with. The aim is to minimize your downtime and ensure efficient day to day management. So at Brightly, we have this model called the APM model, but it's a general topic that I think most of you will understand. The thing that I like about it is that this is a scalable way to explain a process of where you begin and how you keep maintaining that process. So you have your FCA, which you can see as step one, assess. You're thoroughly understanding your building components, your assets, your systems. That was the beginning. Now we're on step two, prioritize. You're identifying and addressing your urgent tasks. You're replacing safety hazards, repairing major things that are urgent today, and organizing your updates effectively based on priority. The next thing you're gonna do is plan. So what's your strategy for handling the most critical items on your list? What needs to be fixed? When does it need to be fixed? Who should be involved? All those details of project management for those repairs. Then, obviously, we execute. We implement those updates and ensure everyone has the tools, the directions they need to do that. And finally, we maintain, and that's the hard part. You're keeping your FCA data up to date by using by using your capital planning and monitoring each part of your facilities so that you're preventing unexpected compliance, maintenance issues, and you're keeping track of what's going on. So the best way to do this, and I'm sure most of you know this, is a CMMS. What is that in case you don't know? I'm gonna assume most of you do know, but I'll give you a quick overview if you don't. It's a computerized maintenance management system, which essentially means putting all that FCA data into a computer program that will help you keep it updated automatically. It simplifies your scheduling, tracking, your maintenance work orders, and makes these processes faster, easier, and more cost effective. What you might hear it as like a work order software, but, essentially, what it does is it schedules your routine maintenance. It manages your work orders. It tracks your assets for maintenance purposes. And once you implement your CMMS, it will really reduce your maintenance costs, decrease your downtime, and truly improve your speed of work order completion, which is nice because then you're not getting yelled at as much. So you're streamlining your day to day. You have your FCA data. You're updating it constantly through a CMMS, which is keeping it updated as you complete tickets, as you complete work orders, as you complete preventative maintenance. And it even will provide you graphs and KPIs and automated reports if that's something you need for your administration or for your own tasks. And then what do we do next? We're finding the strategic asset management, which is our goal. What does that mean? Strategic asset management is something that, to me, the key focus is capital planning. You might call it something else, but in schools and manufacturing, that's what it's called. Capital investment planning and reporting is strategically planning your investments and your spend and your budget long term. You're going to be able to explore what if possible scenarios, emergency scenarios, planning for various outcomes that might change what your budget plan was, which inevitably happens almost everywhere. You're going to try to use prediction modeling so you can assume to know what the future forecast and performance are instead of just trusting that auto mechanic and doing your best. And you'll be able to do better project management to make sure that all of your projects are aligning with your strategic goals of your company, of your school. And finally, a lot of places now have sustainability, net zero plans. And when you do that, you wanna make sure whatever decarbonization sustainability you're doing is tracked so that people know you're following that policy, that protocol. So what do we do? How do we do that? Sounds great, Katie, but where do I start? So I would say it's asset investment planning. An asset investment planning solution will help you create a solid capital plan. Although it's called AIP often, many facilities people, and myself included before I worked here, are not familiar with that term or why it's significant. It might seem like it's a tool for the finance leader, the CFO, the directors, but it's actually really crucial in facilities because we kind of consider it that translator from facilities to finance. You can assess your facilities and add that financial layer to your CMMS data and allow you to make decisions for budgeting. So some of the features, and I'll get into the details a little bit of how it works, but are it'll usually include scenario modeling for your finances, risk assessment matrixes, life cycle cost analysis, and even integration with GIS systems, if that's something you wanna do, which is great, and that'll lead to more future possibilities for you. It'll use planning that prevents reactive maintenance and extends your asset lifespan and essentially helps your facilities management in general. So implementing it is simple. You collect the data, you conduct risk assessments, and you then you'll have financial modeling for your long term planning. How does it work? I mean, pretty straightforward. It's four four key steps in order to get it to work, which is maintain your asset condition data. So start by documenting the condition and age of your assets in your centralized asset directory, and this will keep track of updates as work and repairs are completed. Everything's up to date. So that's essentially leading to the next part, which is if you have your CMMS data, it's connecting to that. It is linking your asset inventory and all your preventative work orders and maintenance activities into one centralized database. But where it takes it to the next level is it's gonna leverage insight and benchmarks. So unlike a CMMS, AIP has detailed insights into your assets, including industry benchmarks, future cost projections, end of life estimates, and even risk scores for your assets. So knowing which boiler is of highest risk and being able to do that, It will also help you support your budget requests. So to me, that's probably the most important feature is that you can use these insights to create data driven budget requests, develop a capital plan that can be up to thirty years, and make sure that you have a comprehensive budget support that explains why you're making your decision. Again, taking those emotions out of it, it'll give you clear projections, robust data, and allow you to present your needs to your board, your governing board, your leader of wherever you are to make sure that it's approved and that you have the evidence to back it up. So strategically managing your journey your assets is a journey. It sounds super overwhelming, but depending on wherever you are, there's something for you to start today or start as soon as you're able, which is if you're just still handling your day to day operations, you can barely handle responding to your work orders, then you can start there. You can start with your foundational asset policy and collecting that data, collecting that information, your energy data, your historical information, and ideally implementing a CMMS to do that, which would help you manage compliance and maintenance. Once you have that, hopefully, you're shifting to your predictive maintenance and asset monitoring. You're not reactive. You're planning ahead. You're not only planning for your facilities, but you're planning for your budget. And so that's where we finally shift to the strategic planning of our asset investment planning, which is creating a larger capital plan for expenditures. So the most important takeaway, I think, is take it one step at a time, and then start with something that can grow with you as you improve. It's a it's a long journey. You're not gonna be able to do this all in a year, but you can start and take it one step at a time. So, realistically, what we like to say here is that strategic objectives for smart campuses, smart companies, wherever you are, is balancing your budget and your limitations. So making sure you're improving experience for the people there. You're optimizing your revenue. You're also being sustainable while doing it. You're creating resilient risk averse campuses, and you're helping foster innovation by having people not have to worry about the facility condition, which we all know is something that affects our day to days even in your own offices and how it affects how you work. So, seems like we have a few questions. I would love to answer some. You can put them in the chat if you have any more questions. The first one is how can facilities managers communicate the importance of asset management to administrators who are focused on immediate concerns? It's a very good question. And I think that for me, the most important part is, like we said in this presentation, is being able to have the details to show the financial costs and the risk obligation as you choose your priorities. So there are immediate concerns, and sometimes there are a lot less flashy immediate concerns. So people wanna put the budget on something you can see, a fancy new gym, a fancy, you know, new turf field. But sometimes, the most expensive things are the things you can't see, like the HVAC system. So, realistically, you have to have the data to prove that this investment, this return on investment is what you need to do. Even if you're gonna do it a year early, you're gonna save money by doing it now and reducing that downtime in the future. And the more data you have and the more, software you have to back it up, it'll give you the the information you need rather than just creating it from scratch every single time, which I know a lot of us have done or do. The next question, how does strategic asset management tie into goals like sustainability? We talked about that a little bit. I think that's an important thing to mention, which is sustainability becomes something that a lot of lot of places are focusing on. But what does that mean exactly? That's something that I as you know, my in the beginning, I said I used to be director of sustainability, and that's one of those things where facilities leaders are often tasked with sustainable tasks because the facilities are the easiest things to see change in from a going green standpoint. It's also financially smart because reducing energy costs, reducing that will reduce spending and save money. So I think if you're strategically planning your capital plan and your asset management, you will it's an obvious correlation, which is that you will be able to plan that every time you put something in, you're doing it in an energy efficient way. You're following a policy that if you have a carbon neutral goal by twenty thirty, which is coming up soon, then you know that you have to pick those things that may cost a little more upfront but are matching your goals. And the return on investment of the savings you'll have will be able to be proven with the data that you have. So that's that's a good one. And then we have how can facilities managers use the information to make a case for increased funding? Actually, this is a good one that I wanna turn more towards the day to day facilities because the other thing you can prove other than just I need a new boiler is I need more staff, or I need more staff at certain times. And so being able to have that data to show the amount of work your staff's doing, the amount of tickets they're closing, if there's a certain area that has the most tickets and you're you're not gonna get the budget that you need to fix some of those problems, you may need more staff. Or if there's a place that is constantly taking more time to be fixed. A lot of staff is often afraid of this digital transformation because they think it's checking up on the amount of work they're doing. But in reality, I always like to explain it as it's not. It's actually proving the amount of work you're doing, that you're doing so much more work than anyone knows you're doing, and that they think a project is a simple one hour fix. And it took you five hours, three days in a row because it keeps breaking. And we're meeting with vendors, and we're problem solving. And so you'll be able to have all of those records of your staff work in order to justify additional staff. So I like that on top of the fact that, obviously, you can use it for those larger projects, but we talked about that a lot already. So at this point, I don't see any more questions. I'll give you a second if you have any more. Oh, here we go. What should be the pattern for tagging the assets in a large scale organization? That's a really good question. So it really depends on your organization and what assets you have. We actually just did a webinar about this, and I'm sure we can send it to you. I'll take note of what your name is so we can send it to you. But when you're doing your asset information tagging, there is a pattern depending on what type of company you're in, if it's a school, if it's a, manufacturing, and making sure that it's consistent. So, realistically, the most important thing is being consistent in how you're naming, what your naming conventions are, and where you're, doing it at different starting on certain larger scale levels and then moving down to the smaller levels. So, I will definitely send you that webinar. It was last week, and it was really good, and I don't wanna waste too much time getting into it here. Any other questions before we wrap up and give you two minutes back? Alright. Great. Well, thank you for joining us, and I think this will conclude our webinar today. And we appreciate your time, and you will get an email. It might not be till Monday, but you'll get an email with the slide deck and any other information you might need, and you can always reply to that email. It'll be from me.