How well do you know your facilities assets?
A facility assessment is the first step to understanding your facilities. A set of assessments identify where the facility(s) is fit for its purpose, where there might be a risk of failure, where there might be substandard performance, and where investments are warranted. There are many types of assessments that can be performed: code review, condition assessment, energy audit, utilization review, etc.
While it would be ideal to have a full set of assessments for each facility, the information in them “decays” over time requiring a refresh and the associated expense can add up.
Facility assessments help you identify and prioritize facility improvements and projects. Strategic facility assessments use available information with additional focus on those items most relevant to upcoming decisions.
A “tiered” facility assessment approach lets you respond to rapidly changing business conditions by using what you already know across your entire portfolio and then augmenting that with targeted technical assessments when and where better information is needed to define potential risks or clarify/justify proposed investments:
- Assess each facility fully, based on your current knowledge and available information.
- Use the results to prioritize action plans and identify data gaps.
- Undertake more detailed assessments where warranted for upcoming decisions.
- Identify potential actions that are “strategic for the business,” “financially justified,” and “risk mitigation.”
- Target your resources on these higher priority actions.
- Repeat on a regular/continuous basis for optimal benefit.
The broad set of assessments provides some confidence that you are addressing the right things, and deeper assessments on these areas provide guidance about the specific actions needed. For lack of better terminology, we call this agile approach “Strategic Facility Assessment,” where the scope is comprehensive but the effort is strategically targeted for the next set of decisions to make the best use of limited resources.
Read more about facility assessments, sign up for access to white papers and other Strategic Facility Guide resources, or contact us for help with a specific project.
