Before sophisticated facilities software, there was Microsoft Excel, and before Microsoft Excel, there was pencil and paper. In 2009, when software and services company VFA Canada began working with Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Esquimalt, it was handed 10 pieces of loose leaf paper documenting in pencil a roofing program dating back to 1965.

Susan Anson, managing director of VFA Canada, recalled this scenario at IFMA Toronto’s recent fmEducation Day, in a session called Do your Facilities Support the Mission?

The challenge with this traditional approach of sitting around a table and capital planning based on “gut feel” is that it has clear limitations.

“You prioritize based on human knowledge,” she said, “and quite often, through attrition, you’re losing that human knowledge.”

Some of CFB Esquimalt’s goals in engaging VFA Canada were to create credible budgets and fund priority projects as well as proactively manage deferred maintenance and plan for future capital renewal. This meant assessing facility conditions, developing a prioritization model and carrying out a change management strategy.

Facility condition index

Step one was to assess the buildings at Canada’s west coast naval base. Ideally, said Anson, condition assessment should be conducted by an impartial engineering firm (i.e. a firm that won’t subsequently be called back to do needed work identified in the assessment.)

CFB Esquimalt’s portfolio consists of 23 sites, 863 buildings collectively measuring 425,000 gross square metres as well as piers, roads, jetties, land and utility distribution — which altogether have a $2-billion replacement value.

The replacement value is used to calculate what’s called the Facility Condition Index — a North American standard — which is the cost to remediate divided by replacement value.

With facility condition data in hand, the next step was to develop a prioritization model.

Prioritization model

Step two was to develop a data-driven, mission-centric prioritization model. CFB Esquimalt wanted to be able to compare mission requirements, remove any biases, and make it scalable from one building to across the portfolio.

VFA Canada led a two-day session with a 15-member, cross-functional team tasked with establishing spending priorities based on parameters for evaluating what’s mission critical.

CFB Esquimalt’s mission is to provide services, support and people to Maritime and Canadian Forces operation or, in lay terms, “get ships to sea.” The parameters it set out were relevance to mission, requirement priority, requirement of prime systems and asset use category.

The facility condition index is one way to prioritize capital spending; pairwise comparisons are another. Pairwise comparisons, as the term suggests, place systems side by side to decide which is more critical. For example, Anson asked: “Is the electrical system more important than the roof?”

“If you don’t have a roof, you’re not going to have an electrical system, so that was the kind of discussion to be able to determine which system was more important than another,” she said.

Change management strategy

Step three was to manage the change in decision-making processes for capital planning.

CFB Esquimalt didn’t do so initially. The thinking was that the apparent logic of the new decision-making approach would be enough to get buy-in. They were surprised when it wasn’t, said Anson.

“When you develop a new approach, not everybody’s going to get on board with that, so you need to be able to think about what has to change and who you have to manage to get on board with that change,” she said.

Anyone the transition affected needed to be included, from tradespeople to all levels of management.

Ultimately, CFB Esquimalt established capital spending priorities for the following two years, with the ability to update them annually with new data. In 2011, the Real Property Institute of Canada recognized it with a Real Property Award for best practices in comprehensive planning.

“By and large, depending on size of portfolio, you’re going to be inundated with things that need attention,” said Anson, “so you need some way to slice and dice it to make the most important come to the top.”

Michelle Ervin is the editor of Canadian Facility Management & Design.