Using Facility Management Metrics to Support Capital Planning

The only way to produce an accurate capital budget is to analyze accurate data. The problem is, many facilities don’t have precise facility management metrics to start with.

Issues in Gathering Facility Management metrics

As we discussed in a previous post, traditional capital planning relies on a combination of sources:

Generic statistics: Current solutions use ballpark depreciation, maintenance, and facility management metrics based on regional equipment averages. This data is better than nothing but would be much more accurate if it incorporated crucial specifics like maintenance history, current status, recent weather events, preventive maintenance, and current deferred maintenance.

Siloed data: Facility management metrics are spread across various sources such as physical ledgers, workers’ memories, poorly updated spreadsheets, paper work orders and Post-it notes, and several different software and management systems.

Outdated information: Few organizations keep their facility condition assessments truly up to date—which is understandable. Using current methods, it’s a costly and labor-intensive task. The unfortunate result is that there is no one comprehensive, up-to-date source of truth when it’s time for budget planning.

Accurate Metrics Begin with an Accurate FCA

As mentioned above, it used to be expensive and time-consuming to do a facility condition assessment. Notice we said “used to be.” New technology is making it much easier to collect, store, analyze, and constantly update all the data needed for an FCA.

FCA software brings assessments into the digital age by:

• Streamlining the data collection process
• Storing your facilities’ historical information in one place
• Creating a digital twin of your facility with living data that’s easy to update

With AkitaBox’s FCA software, you can easily generate facility metrics specific to your assets and your building. This data can show you which projects to prioritize, which projects to defer, and which areas contain the greatest financial risks – all key components that support smarter capital planning.

Better Capital Planning with Better Metrics

FCA software coupled with capital planning tools can truly revolutionize your capital planning process by giving your facility manager the data they need to accurately present facility conditions to you and other stakeholders.

It’s finally possible to have the detailed information required to make appropriate budget decisions now, while setting the foundational architecture to automate facility data collection and aggregation for the future.

Accurate Facility Management Metrics that Provide the Complete Picture

AkitaBox provides the complete picture with easy-to-understand graphics, reports, and predictive models that answer the questions you and other stakeholders care most about:

• Cost: At a glance, see the total cost of major repairs and replacements each year, and view a line-by-line breakdown of each year’s major costs.
• Risk: Convey why something should be prioritized by linking the condition to the severity of failure. With a clear picture of risk, you can more easily explain, for example, that elevator bank B must be prioritized this year because when (not if) it fails, it will be incredibly costly in terms of lost productivity and emergency repairs. Therefore, prioritizing it now will not only save money but prevent bad press or even injury.
• Consequence: Shed some light on those accumulating deferral costs and relay the heavy toll of early asset replacement forced by a lack of proper preventive maintenance.
• Priority: Compare buildings across the entire facility portfolio and view their condition vs. mission criticality, so investment priorities become more apparent. When teams run into situations in which costs exceed capital, budgeters can compare deferrals and choose the lesser of several evils, leaning on their CM for insight into which failures will merely affect comfort and which may lead to catastrophe.

While the day-to-day Use of the AkitaBox Platform centers around facility maintainers, the compilation of data points offered by AkitaBox forms a comprehensive picture build for the executive decision maker.

Leverage Your Facility Management Metrics

AkitaBox provides the precise facility management metrics and insights required for facility directors to communicate needs to stakeholders. Leveraging this information simplifies capital planning by accurately considering the facilities’ present condition and future needs. Stakeholders can not only establish precise capital budget plans but also appropriately manage funds on an ongoing basis.

Looking toward the future of preventive maintenance, AkitaBox provides the foundation required to bring together IoT, big data, and AI. This base architecture is the first step in building and implementing fully automated predictive maintenance and ongoing capital management.