The Value of Facility Assessments

Sometimes it seems ironic that while we have more data than ever, we may not have enough useful information.  I suppose this is a modern day version of the needle in a haystack – too much hay makes it hard to find the needle.

A key premise of the Strategic Facility Guide approach is that we probably already know a lot of what we need to know, but it may not be organized in a way that makes it easy to see, understand, and use.  A second key premise is that understanding how much more we need to know right now reduces the amount of additional information to obtain (making things faster, less expensive, and easier to see the needle with less “hay” to go thru to find that needle).

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Measurement vs. Planning

The Strategic Facility Guide is essentially about measurement and planning.  The purpose of the Guide is to help bridge the gap between these two mutually exclusive activities.  They are exclusive in time – one is future and one is present.  An attempted measurement of a plan is really a projection – a presumed or defined metric, not an actual one.

  • Planning is the activity of identifying a desired future state, or the desired response to a potential future situation. The Plan is the desired outcome to achieve.
  • Measurement is the activity of quantifying an existing state to reduce uncertainty about it (more on this later). The Metric is the dimension and precision of the measurement.

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