Is asset condition data enough to build a strategic asset management plan? (Spoiler: It's not)

Asset condition data enough to build a strategic asset management plan. Spoiler, it's not. I'm Dan Hounsel, senior editor for the facilities market with Trade Press Media Group. Thank you to our sponsor today, Brightly Software. Before we begin, let's cover a few quick housekeeping details. We encourage audience questions throughout the webcast. To submit your questions, navigate to the Q and A Ask Questions module at the bottom of the screen and type in your questions at any time. To earn zero point one CEUs, you must watch forty minutes or more of this event. You can download your certificate at the completion of the webcast from the EARN certification module. There's also a related content module on your screen. This area has more information and links that you can explore. Today's event will be archived at facilitiesnet dot com slash webcasts. Our learning objectives today include these: Explore case studies and real life examples that showcase the way organizations are collecting and leveraging the data needed for strategic asset management. Understand how a strategic asset management plan enables you to optimize the way you're treating assets and better plan budget and capital works projects. Learn how an effective strategic asset management plan can help you make informed decisions, informed strategic decision and capital plans. With that, I will pass it over to Luke Anderson who is Strategic Solution Consultant with Brightly Software. Luke, the microphone is yours. Thanks everybody. And I will come on video for a moment to say hello. I'm having some bandwidth issues, so I'm losing connection and losing audio if I use video too long, so I will do the moderation off of video today unfortunately. But it's great to meet everybody. I'm here in, snowy, icy Raleigh, North Carolina where, parts of our area received over a foot of snow last weekend, which has subsequently shut down. All schools, all local government has completely ground our entire county to a halt, so we are all snowed in with about half an inch of snow left on the ground. But looking forward to today, we've got some great, folks that we're going to speak with. I'm going do some very brief introductions and then we're going to cover just a little level setting, and then we've got some great questions and some great stories that we're going go through for our time. When we did the practice run of this, we probably went close to two hours. I don't think we're going to have any lack of content for you guys today. We've got some great things that we'll go through. There is a Q and A on the side. Please submit those questions in there as we're going. I'll try to grab those live if the speaker is speaking, you have a question for a speaker, but we'll definitely make sure to go through it at the end. So the three folks we've got today, Alex, Scott and Ron. Alex's background, really right now is the director of Waco Independent School District, the director of Facilities and Maintenance Management, focusing again in that kind of educational environment. Scott, on the other hand, though still a public service, expert is on the local government side. He is the DPW director for Fountain Valley, California. And then Ron comes with extensive experience running the DPW for the Navy for a couple of decades. So, he's now with one of our partners in Alpha Facility Solutions, but he brings a lot of great stories, a lot of great experience, so we definitely welcome everybody to the call. I'd like to start by just level setting a basic concept when we start to talk about things like condition of our assets and asset data and work orders. We're going go through a lot of questions around things like aging workforce and transition of leadership, but I wanted to bring this up because I just want to draw a linkage between the idea of an asset register, right, the database that tells us what do we own, what condition is it in, that has a relationship to the work order system. The work orders, whatever work order system you're using, the work orders you're doing, you're doing on the assets within your register. So, at a very high level when we think about the condition of an asset, right, the work order history should and does have an impact on that condition. When we understand the condition of an asset, now we can start to do long term planning. And that's really the topic of our conversation today, the little internal debate we're gonna have is, is that enough data? Is knowing the condition of my asset enough to take me to this ability to do condition asset management? We're gonna use the term facility condition assessment quite often, FCA, condition evaluation, boots on the ground, there's lot of different ways of kind of referring to it. I wanted to pull this up just so everybody can understand what we're referring to. I would imagine most of you on this call have either done or are familiar with a facility condition assessment, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time, but in general, it is a process of putting boots on the ground, walking through a building or a structure, capturing the main assets within these twelve areas, identifying age, condition, replacement life cycle, replacement value, and more, and that's part of what we'll kind of discuss today. So I wanna jump right in with my first question, let me go back to our list of esteemed panelists here. Uh-oh, too far, there we go. And I wanna start, I'm gonna open this one up to all three of you guys. Think I want to get everybody's opinion on this very first one, so let's just start with Alex, if you don't mind. And I want you to think about data that you have now with any assessments or data that you've had in the past. How has having that information built credibility, how has it changed your relationship with people like finance, officials, leadership, and then as a follow-up, is there any area that that data alone falls short on with kind of building some of that trust with your direct leadership. And we're having audio issues with Alex, fantastic. So let's go on to Scott, perfect. So the question was where does the data fall short? How does it build the confidence, correct? Yeah, I would say, how does having it help build confidence? But then typically we know it's not everything. So where does just data by itself fall short, great. Well, data by itself is just a snapshot in time and it's only as good as how recent it is. And so if you're not keeping it up, we recently had a facility condition assessment report done, which is great because that creates a baseline and it gives us something to build off of. But essentially, if you don't touch it, it's out of date within a week of finishing it. So unless you're using something to keep it updated, most of the time that static report really doesn't help the staff to be able to long term plan out things. And where does it fall short? It doesn't in our organization, the organizations I've worked for so we're I'm on the West Coast, Southern California for all the different public sector jobs that I've had. And so we were gonna deal with it a little bit different. Fortunately, we don't have the same type of cold that you have and the issues that go with the snow and everything. But it's it really is something that in the Pollux sector, have limited funds, very limited funds. And so as a result, there is a constant competition. And if you can't show that you're applying those funds to really the greatest need, and if you don't have the data to support that, that, hey, we looked at everything and that's current, then you can lose some of that support and as well as the confidence from the elected officials and city manager, in our case a city manager. So with that, I'll stop talking. I'll let go over to Ron and back to Alex because I'm sure they have plenty to contribute. Luke, are your thoughts there? Yeah, please. I represent a facility asset management company, so we think about this kind of stuff all the time. And as I think about asset management, my mind goes to definitions that I've come across over the years. I spent four years with Alpha and nine years with a large school district as director of SODIS before Alpha, but I've come across a couple of definitions of asset management that I think help make the case that the data is the basis for that credibility with the other parties that you work with. So let me explain, a guy named DJ Vaneer, Canadian fellow early 2000s, he wrote an article called Why Industry Needs Asset Management Tools. Why Industry Needs Asset Management Tools. And he defined asset management as the answering of six what questions that you ask yourself not just It's not just what. But you ask again, three years. You're working. And the questions are what assets do we own, so that's the first. What's the value of our assets? What's the condition of our assets? What maintenance has been deployed, what items are already in backlog, need maintenance right away. The fifth one is the and the replacement cost at the end of the service life, so it's all about life cycle and replacement cost. And then with all that information, what should we replace first? So I like how he put the emphasis on gathering the data, right? So asking yourself these what questions, gathering this data and that's a baseline, but then there's another definition that I came across that really puts another spin on it that's really helpful. A guy named Wayne Eddy, Australian guy created a municipal knowledge base and he said asset management is the combination of management, like facilities management, financial, economic, engineering and other practices. So there's this team of individuals of different departments, if you will, applied to the physical assets, we would say the built environment. So this team works together on the built environment with the objective of providing a level of service at the most cost effective price. And the whole life cycle is involved, the whole facility life cycle is in view. All right, so you have these two different definitions that I think fit together really well because in one case it's about the data, right? It's answering these what questions that gives you the data set. And then you take that data and you leverage that in strategic partnerships, if you will, strategic relationships with finance and procurement, maybe even your maintainers with HR, the data becomes the basis for your credibility because you use that data you've gathered and we got to think about how to keep that data current too, as Scott mentioned, because, you know, if you don't keep the data current, then your arguments are dead after, you know, a month or a year or whatever. But I mean, so long answer, but I just like the way that those two definitions kind of fit together to make the case that you got to have the data, but then you use the data to establish your credibility with these other departments to get what you with finance, with procurement, with engineering, etcetera. Hope that makes sense. Makes a ton of sense and I love that concept that it's kind of a direct answer. It's, you know, data gives us the foundation, it's the framing for the house. You can't have the credibility without data, but data alone, the frame alone is not a home, right? There's got to be a way to use it and understand it in order to add context. So, Alex, I think you were able to get connected again. Are you able to hear us? I think so. Can you all hear me? Gotcha. We sure can. You're okay. Perfect. Good. Sorry about that. But in our case here at the district, we met some challenges you know, the year after COVID. In our case was, you know, one of our buildings burned down and we had to go through the whole motions of filing a claim, you know, going into those discussions with our insurance company. And the one thing that we really had was we had a robust, know, set of information basically of our buildings and specifically for the one that burned down. So when we were going into the old, you know, claim situation going back and forth as far as you know, what should we get compensator for, what don't. So we did present basically a quote or a proposal for an estimate, sorry, for the actual replacement of that building. So what that really helped us with as a district was we went from a fourteen million dollars offer from the insurance company into a twenty two, almost twenty three million dollar payoff for that. The reason for that was because we had basically all our information in place. So whenever the company that came out to do the estimate of the loss, we had also an estimate prepared in house based on the data that we had because of the FCA that we had just recently in twenty nineteen put together. So when they saw the actual information and all the data that we were providing, it gave us that credibility to basically get that increase on the payoff for that. The other thing is that we have used it to basically request additional staffing based on the data that we have and what is the plan, you know, long range plan of how we're gonna use those assets. And we have proven that that has been a benefit not only for our department but also for the district Following up with that data and position assessment that we had of how we needed to maintain those assets throughout the following years and the amount of personnel staff that we needed to successfully put that in place. Also adding the extended life cycle of equipment as well just because of the years that they were installed. So we were tracking all of the actual work that we were performing and how that was taking a positive effect on the outcome of that equipment. Also requesting funding. So having, and we do struggle. I think it's a struggle to just maintain it. Really I think that's a struggle for every organization that has an FCA, especially doing it in house. So that's why you have to basically go out and create those partnerships with outside vendors that can basically give you that option and that provide you with those services really that sometimes in house is really difficult to do. I think the biggest thing that it has given us as far as you know, it's buy in from our admin and our leadership staff. As far as when we go out to request something, you know, we don't only, you know, are good at the selling point, but we also show that it is a long, there's longevity as far as you know, that we're executing what we're promising. I think you you used to make the argument with the procurement, say you know, I know I need roofs over the next five years. Well maybe I need an indefinite delivery, an IDIQ contract for roofing, right? Because I could bid six times over and not get the best price or I could have an IDIQ and I could get some strategic sourced competitive pricing, right? That's the name of the game is providing these services most cost effectively. So you leverage the data with procurement. As Alex said, you leverage the data with your finance team. I know what I need. I got a list of projects ready to go. You got extra funding somebody else couldn't spend. I can spend it. I'm ready to go because I've got a prioritized list. Yeah. And I think providing that condition of where we are, you know, falls into what you just said. You know, where are we today? You know, based on the data that we have. And like Scott said, you know, data is just data if you don't really use it or utilize it in a way that you're really informing, you know, your, in this case, our district, you know, what is the correct, the real condition of our buildings and our, you know, building portfolio moving forward. So I think just having those open conversations with the right information at hand really just simplifies those conversations of where we are and where we need to get. But one of the added benefits too, as Alec you're talking about the answers, we're dealing with a lot of different, some are dealing with districts or elected officials, they have a preference of their local areas. So if you can have the whole picture there and you can show, hey, we're not showing favoritism at one given location, but really this is the highest priority or the highest need, it helps the credibility in that regard too. And you can show if you have a standard level of service that you're applying across your whole municipality. Here's what I'm trying to do, I've got to meet the need over here, it's greater than over here because it's the same level of service. You told me what level of service you wanted, leadership, now I'm trying to deliver it, so here's what it's going to take, And I've got the data to prove it. Think that's Yeah. And how the decision is going to affect the upcoming years. You know, whatever work you don't do or you don't replace this year is just going to add up to next year and that's going to basically increase cost. So you know, you have a snapshot of basically what probably Scott, the next four or five years, more or less that you could actually give accurate data as far as you know, here's where we are, here's how much it's going to cost us in the near future. Right. Which allows you to have those funding questions so that maybe if you didn't hit those key areas for certain electeds that you can show, hey, year two or year three, we're going to be there and you can start the dialogue early to to at least plant the seed about getting funding approved for future years. That's great. Yeah, that's a pretty powerful story, Alex, of that data justifying what eight million dollars more in the insurance buyout. That's pretty incredible, and you guys alluded to it in the back and forth there, and it's perfect segue because probably a great example is that insurance group or speaking to counsel about the projects or the indefinite contract for roofing. The data that you have is only valuable if people buy into it, they trust it, right? You could have a whole bunch of data and if the insurance company looked at that, Alex, and said, This is a bunch of garbage, there's no way this is true, number wouldn't have or couldn't have changed. So, if you can, let's anybody who wants to jump in, I think we're speaking freely here. Let's talk about some of the inconsistencies, maybe new leadership coming in, Scott. Know that's one thing we talked about. A lot of people turn over every two to four years. How do you overcome those inconsistencies? How do you educate people as to the data that you have and why it should be trusted? Well, of the people on this call and certainly us on the panel, we're technical people, right? So there's a lot less emotion. It's like what does the data show? That's what we're going to do. We're not making these decisions based upon our feelings. We're looking at a given situation saying what needs the current or the highest attention. However, the elected czar and appointed people are not necessarily in the same position nor do they look at things the same way. So, I'm very fortunate right now. I have a a group of elected that, support facility maintenance. We were in a position where, we had some buildings that were were really neglected and, the city council wanted to know where are we standing throughout the city. So we we went through the process, FCA, we got the software. We're we're really kicking off. I'd love to say we're we're deep into it, but we're at the beginning stages. But I have worked with with Brightly before and and, at another agency, and so I'm it's very promising. But as as you're saying, Luke, is is this council is gonna change every two to four years. They're changing. So what we can do with the data, at least what you can do when you do have that support, and and even when you don't, you can make a a strong argument, but when you do have the support, most of us are doing a multi year capital improvement plan, right? We're not talking about one year at a time. There is a five, ten year and we're scheduling this out. And certainly if you're talking about, hey, when's the next time we're going to do a roof? That's way out there. But to get it on the books and to be able to have those conversations early helps set a little bit of the tone with the electives when those competing projects come up for general fund monies, they at least will take it in consideration. It may get pushed a year or two and we got to be flexible, but at least it says, hey, the longer we push it, the bigger the backlog, the harder it's going to be to address it, especially if you start to build in escalation, right? It's because you have a cost to supply it in time. And if you don't consider escalation, then you can really find yourself in a bad spot. I think when you do a condition assessment and an asset inventory, you've got to recognize or I think it's helpful to recognize, especially in your dialogue with leadership that you've got some static data, you know, the data that's never going to change, make model serial number, data installed, so static data, and you've got some dynamic data. Condition information, of course the life cycle is not gonna change, but the condition is gonna change because it's not static, it's dynamic. And it can help to have this dialogue with leadership and say, think about condition data, it's affected by the original engineering, was it designed properly as a piece of equipment? Was it installed properly to begin with? What about patterns? Are we using it the same in the same pattern of use as we intended to when we installed it? Maybe we've doubled the use just by use patterns. What about weather exposure? Is it being used in an environment that it was intended to be used in? And then maintenance, is the maintenance being done like it's supposed to be done? Is that consistent? And so you have all these different variables that can affect the condition. And so it makes sense that you would have to revisit at least occasionally and update your conditions and zero in on the conditions and make sure that you've got a good forecast going three to five years out. And that can help a little bit in the dialogue with the leadership when they're like, I thought we did this already, why do we have to go look again? And the reality is that data set has to live on and we have to keep updating it and keep it current so that it's going to feed us good information so we remain credible. I think that can be helpful. Yeah, and just another idea on that too. Sorry, Alex. Well, I'll be quick. Just another idea on that is the facility condition index too. When we're talking about pay long term and electives change, there if you're an organization long enough or somebody has been doing it, doing the proper documentation, you can see that, hey, while we were prescribing money, we were in the green or in the yellow. But as we've been deferring things, we're obviously sliding more to the yellow and the red. With electives, it's my opinion that big chubby crayon or just as simple as possible is the best thing to do. And colors as we can create the pictographs or the infographs, so to speak, from the data is super helpful at a high level. And then those that are enough, you can dive into it, but some of them, if you try to just overwhelm. Yeah, in our cases, the FCA, it's a living document. It's going to continue to evolve throughout the years. And what I've seen with my experience here is that there's a lot of elements that go into play of how that's really going to be used. For instance, you might have facility condition assessments that go strictly by manufacturers recommendation of a life cycle. They could tell you it's gonna last fifteen years and you got the lemon out of the bunch and the equipment lasted nine. And then you have the other side of it where we have equipment that was, lifecycle expectancy was fifteen years and we took it to twenty five. There's a lot of factors that command into making your data. And that's why whenever we talk about data facility condition assessment is just like Scott said, it's black and white. There's no feelings attached to it. It's what it is. But I think that there's a lot of other external things going on that affect that assessment. For instance, are you really applying good preventative maintenance to your systems? Are you extending life cycle, the recommended life cycle of that equipment? How is that really working out? Are you documenting it? Are you collecting the data that's basically going to be in that conversation of, hey, and I know that Scott is probably gonna laugh, but that we end up asking for ten million dollars and you're like, well, here's three and make it work. Know, so, you know, once you have that and you fall into that sort of, you know, dynamics of asking for funding, which you don't get not every time what you're asking for, that additional element comes into play as far as, okay, which are really the worst of the worst? And that's when staff comes in, you you look at the work order systems, which systems are at work more than others. So data is a living, you know, that FCI is going to be a living document. It's going to be feeding from so many sources. And I think that's what you can control most of the time in house as far as you know, what are those conversations looking like? You know, are you having those honest conversations with your staff? Are you really looking into those other data points that are affecting the outcome of that five year planning, a long range planning that you have of replacements? Did that make sense or not? Did to me. Please go ahead. No, I was just going add and as a quick follow-up on the condition assessment, we're trying to apply the factors that speak to those variables. So we're in the field, we're putting our eyeballs and our hands on equipment to try to assess its condition, we're interacting with the maintenance staff about the age of the equipment and the maintenance on the equipment and the reliability of the equipment, and so you're trying to blend together several factors to come up with an objective score, if you will, the condition. And so you try to apply a standard methodology and it doesn't have to be us, it's anybody who's doing this condition assessment, they just what you want to do is you want to apply these entering arguments of age and condition and reliability and maintenance to blend together a good condition score that you then update periodically, so you've got a good forecast going forward. So there's a question, a couple questions by Aaron Thomas in the Q and A. I don't know if we want to answer number four now. I think Ron, you might be able to me see if I can catch up with you, Scott. Oh, man. I've been a little bit behind on that. I apologize. No, no, no. What's the question? This is fundamentally Yeah, please. Go ahead, Luke. Go ahead. Oh, there. Yeah, fundamentally, what should come first asset condition data or the asset management plan? I would say the asset management plan, I think, or the strategic vision behind the plan is gonna drive what you're doing going forward. You have to have condition data to inform the execution of your budget, of your program, but you have to have strategic, the idea of a strategic asset management plan is to incorporate the vision of the leadership of your organization in helping inform where are we going as an organization? What are we doing moving forward? What's important to us as a district, as a municipality, as a higher ed institution, whatever. And so you're trying to apply that strategic vision to your tactics every day in day out, all right? And so if you have that vision from your leadership, then you apply that vision to what you see before you as the condition of your assets. So I'm gonna apply that vision and I'm gonna make decisions based on the level of service we've agreed on, what level of service do you want me to achieve? Is this, and by that I mean, are we Disney World? We a hospital? Is that the level of service and the level of maintenance that we can afford or well, no, maybe it's a nice public library or a nice grocery store. We have to set our expectations of what we can afford as an institution in terms of level of service going forward. And when you have that lined out, now you're gonna apply that to your needs in front of you and the budget that can be afforded and you execute that plan. I hope that makes sense. It's kind of you kind of have to have both. It does, would like to add on though, because sometimes and not add on so much to your technical answer because you're much more knowledgeable than me, but from the procurement side. So sometimes one of the delays for public sector is, oh man, we got to go through this long process to be able to procure. And so what I wanted to add is that, we were able to get through it and get through it a very cost effective way and a timely way by, using Sourcewell, actually using Brightly and then Brightly, had a line item in their through Sourcewell where we were able to get, we actually got alpha out and, did a facility condition assessment. And so that really streamlined it and it was helpful. So it wasn't it's not such a daunting task when you have to say, oh, I gotta come up with all this RFP, RFQ, have staff draw it up. You you can actually have a a quicker way of getting there. Yeah. I I would agree with with Ron. You know, in our case, before we actually went with the with the FCA, you know, because we had to basically ask for the funding for it. We didn't have our in house funding for it. You know, we went to the CFO and we basically told her, hey, I have fifty cents, but I need five hundred. Could you fix me up with the rest? But before we even had those conversations with them, we basically detailed the plan of what benefits would it bring. Detailing, okay, here's the expectation. And when we wanted to set up that expectation, we wanted to set up one that would push us, would challenge us, but at the same time was one that we really could sustain with the staffing that we had. So once we detailed that plan and we basically show the roadmap of how that was going to look in the future, the buy in for securing the funding for moving forward with the FCA was done. You know, then really came the difficult part, not, you know, getting it done, but sustaining it afterwards. And I think, you know, sticking to the plan and making sure that you provide that information to leadership so they can make the decision of, you know, pulling the trigger on an FCA because sometimes they don't really it's not that they don't see the value of it, you know, they see it as an expense, you know, but I think just having that plan upfront of how that is going to look and how that, you know, incorporating that FCA is going to be a benefit for your institution. I think that's the best way to really move forward. There's another question from Aaron and then Brian is at one, but the next one is, I can speak to it if we're talking public right away, how we do it, but I think that if I'm understanding the gist of it, he's talking about, being able to track assets. And in this case, he's talking about a PVC water line and tracking the degradation of it. And so Ron or Alex, you Ron particularly, I think you and I've had conversations about this a little bit, but it's I think it'd be similar to like water lines and walls if you're talking to facility or electrical lines and walls, right? Yeah, if you're talking at panels, it's one thing, but how do you track the degradation of those things that are hidden that you can't see? To a large degree, you have to do that based on life cycle alone to some degree. Branch wiring, like you mentioned, would be a good example or waterline things that you can't physically inspect, but you can take some cues from how those systems are behaving. So if you're having frequent plumbing backups, right, your system that you can't see, you could camera scope it, of course, you could put a camera scope down a plumbing line and see what's going on. But branch wiring, if you're having a lot of shorts, you could do some voltage drop testing. Know, there's some things that you could do to try to assess the performance of a hidden asset. But in a lot of cases you have to at least start with the lifecycle of that hidden asset and say, you know, BOMA, Billing Owners and Managers Association, they publish standard lifecycles that are a starting point, and so you can use that BOMA life cycle as a starting point as a kind of a realistic expectation for the most conservative life cycle that you could expect, and then try to take some cues from the performance of the assets. Yeah, and from the public infrastructure side in a public right of way, essentially, it's different funding mechanisms, right? Most of the time the facilities and things that are on the private side, when I say private, it's publicly owned, but not necessarily within the public right of way where you have funding mechanisms like an enterprise fund, meaning you're charging water utility bills or sewer bills. But when you are charging a water bill or sewer bill, then you have the ability to have a master plan And that master plan is updated regularly, maybe every five years or so. And you're going out and you're inspecting your infrastructure and using the best testing methods available and updating the cost for the replacement. And that's how you figure your fees, how much you're charging for operations and replacements and everything. So that's the short answer without getting into all of that, but a little different, obviously, if it's if you're talking about, hey, got a water main on a campus, right? I got a huge campus that's running across. That's not necessarily because the same type of funding source. Sorry, Luke, I don't mean to be doing your job, it looks like Brian. I love it. Keep it going, yeah. Have you had success in capitalizing this FCA effort expenses or did this hit operational? In our case it was general fund, it's operational, it wasn't a means of capitalizing it unless we find some sort of arena where we can get some outside grant funding to address the particular infrastructure. That would be from my perspective. Yeah, us was the same Scott. It came out from the general fund, it wasn't really, know there was not a funding source out there that we could use outside of our own funding. I think in some cases, I'm aware of some K-twelve districts that have sales tax programs, especially in the southeast, I'm aware of some of them, and sometimes they're able to capitalize the expenses associated with condition assessment, and then even managing the work going forward using the sales tax to fund the work associated with the ultimate work that you're doing in the facility. But I I suppose that's cactus cat scan depending on the rules and the the district you're working. Yeah. Is it's it really does to a certain degree as much as we're technical people and we most of us, at least on the public side it seems like we're putting our hat on and rolling our sleeves up and getting the work done. But we have to be advocates, we have to be sales people. We have to believe in the data ourselves. We got to understand where it came from and then sit down and really tell the story and use all the tools that are available, whether it be through the graphs that they have that make it simple or whatever it is to really explain the situation. And then when everything's said and done, not be offended if they say no. But we got to do our best to ask for the money, do be compelling. And these tools, they allow you having the facility condition assessment, having an asset management program, showing the facility condition index, those are all great tools to make the argument to plead the case, and you have to buy in, you have to really, you have to be the advocate is what it comes down to. Somebody has somebody is gonna do it and and you're competing against other departments, you know, bad as it may sound, it's the truth. You're competing against other departments like fire or safety, really police, whatever it is, that typically are going to get the nod more often than not. And so you got to find a way to be compelling and show that, hey, if we don't do this, well then this is the potential impacts and the costs. We may not have to do it this year, but you can't defer this five, ten years and expect for things to be okay. And an emergency and explain it, an emergency repair or a reactive maintenance where something's broken and you're going out there is going to be a lot more expensive than doing the preventative or doing it ahead of schedule. In our case was I think one thing that really helped this year leadership. We have a new superintendent, she's really a person that really motivates people and really is really inclusive, when when it comes to planning. And this year we were included in, you know, what's the vision and the mission of the district? You know, what is the goals that we have as a school district? You know, is to guarantee, you know, the education of our students, they're their priority, you know, then we have staff and all those things that come into play that sometimes you're not really seeing the larger picture because sometimes you're not included in that conversation just because you're maintenance and it's not, they don't really, some leadership really don't see the fit. They're just like, hey, keep things running and just, you'll be fine. In this case, you know, she wanted to share what that vision looked like. And once we had a better understanding of what was the, you know, the result that she was looking for, we tend to understand where we fit in. Right? And then once you start understanding where you fit in into that master plan, you know, as an institution, and in our case, a school district, start learning, okay, now I know where really my priority should be. And you start addressing those and you start incorporating that into the conversations that you have when you're asking for funding, know, saying, hey, we're following the vision, we're following the mission of what the school district is trying to accomplish. And here is, you know, our contribution to that, you know, to promoting students, to making, you know, their learning environment, you know, one that they can enjoy, you know, that the facilities are up and running, know, that let's say the outside of the building looks nice. In our case, know, we're also over custodial, you know, you have probably eighty percent of the parents don't go to the campus, know, they don't enter the campus. They're always looking on the outside, know, what are the things that they're looking at, know, what are the priorities to really enhance that learning experience as well as the staff. They spend more time there than they're actually at their house. I'm married to a teacher, so I know, you know, the whole, you're on vacation, but then they want to go back to the school, they're wanting to get out, but then they want to go back. So you want to know as a department how you fit into that. So I think knowing that really helps that conversation of having that, you know, nice, you know, conversations of how can you help. Ron, Patricia has a question in there that I think you might be able to answer real well. I don't know if you had a chance to do Exactly what I was thinking, Scott. Yep. That's exactly what I was thinking. Number seven, is it? Yeah. Yep. In the past, estimated life expectancy for commercial building systems and components was built to last. Have these life cycles with new equipment changed? That's a tough one. I got an anecdote here I'll share, Ron, while you think about that for a moment. I know it's on the fly, but I was working with a client out in Texas and they were showing me their storm water infrastructure and he told me a story that one of their lift stations for one of the neighborhoods, a fairly affluent neighborhood, was on the side of a hill, and at the bottom of that hill was the storm water pump, and it was two nineteen oh six Rolls Royce airplane turbines that they were using to pump that water. So they had them, you know, at this point, what, one hundred and eighteen years on that life cycle? And he was laughing because he says the biggest challenge we're going to have is not replacing these things, it's convincing everybody that the new ones we put in are not going to last one hundred and twenty years. I think newer systems is not that well, older systems, of course, you know, when you compare them, they lasted longer. I think new systems really are incorporating so much technology into it that right now you have so many points that are sensitive to certain conditions, you know, like HVAC, like, you know, electrical lighting that it affects them more. So you could see a system that's not not that it's not working, it's that just the conditions that it has, it's built in to protect so much system that it starts shutting down. You know, you see units that are tripping more than they used to just because, you know, they have made them sensitive so they could protect themselves from either power surge or, you know, different weather conditions that sometimes is is is tough, you know, because you're seeing all these systems newer newer systems that are just, you know, tripping on free stats and, you know, and then you have your control system, which is not really working as it should and, you know, in relationship with with that unit and it's opening out an outside damper and it's pulling cold air into the system and the system is shutting down because it should not be pulling cool air from the outside cold air. I think systems have become extremely more sensitive than they used to be just because of the incorporation of so much technology into them. And I think equipment in the past was just simple. I mean, it was just, you know, crank it on and it stayed on until it basically died. I don't know if that makes sense or not. I don't disagree. I think you're right, Alex. I also think that the tipping point or the critical factor is your understanding of what you own and how to maintain it through its life cycle and whether or not you are maintaining it. I think that's going to be the more determining factor is whether you have a plan to address the maintenance that that equipment needs. I can't say anecdotally that I can think of a dramatic change in life cycles of anything in my memory and my recollection. I think Alex is right, and that it's probably tipping down a bit because of the sophistication of the equipment, but I think the bigger factor is just whether it's being managed and maintained, whether you're getting your eyeballs and your hands on in the pre compete that's recommended. I think that's the bigger factor. Awesome. Well, great questions that are coming in. If we get more, we'll keep addressing, but I want to get to kind of the pinnacle of the chat here, getting a little low on time, so I think we'll probably be the last question unless we get more from the audience. But I want to go with question number four on the list, guys. Think it's a really important one. You know, we think about asset condition as the foundation. Everything we've talked about today has really been based around that idea that the condition data is that foundation, it's the start. But where does this stop being enough, right? What other information do you think is important in order effectively do the prioritization and decision making outside of just the condition? I'll start it. I think factors associated with risk are very important. By risk I'm referring to you know, two sides of a matrix likelihood or probability of failure. So how old is usually how old is the people who are getting, how likely is its failure? And then the other matrix is consequence or criticality. So how important is that asset or is that facility to you, to your institution? And that starts with the mission vision and what's been laid out in the strategic asset management plan. So you've got to apply likelihood of failure based on age and criticality, mission dependency, consequence to help you prioritize. So you're going to take your condition information and then you're going to apply how important are these assets to us or these facilities. Is this the headquarters? Is this, you know, just an ancillary support facility? Is this a storage building somewhere? And then you could also apply system priorities, like for instance, HVAC, roofing, life safety equipment is almost always very important to an institution. So you start to bring in other factors that essentially replicate what's going on in your head. You know, what's going on in your head is, well, I understand the condition, but that's not a very important facility. This other one is more important. Or that's not that's just, you know, that's flooring, which to some people is more important, but but the HVAC is really super important in the roof, etcetera. So you're trying to replicate what's going on in your head in terms of prioritization. What do you guys think? My response is gonna be probably just because I deal with a lot of electives and and the politics and community groups. The the the data is real clear. I mean, it it can it can stop being sufficient when you start getting into the the preferences, the feelings, the energy that a community may have. Example I've used before is you have a family, you have a budget, and you may need a new roof on the house, but if the wife and the kids are dying and have their heart set on going on a trip to Disneyland or something like that, you may need to defer that maintenance for a little bit and take care of the family and the well-being of the family. So that's part of it is I'd say just at least in in in my circle and and those that I I work alongside, you gotta find out what else is the the goals of the community or the goals of the organization. So and that's not gonna be reflected within the asset management plan. And and so once you know that, once again, don't get emotional. You're trying to do the best you can, and it's okay. We we can do these other things or we can defer this money somewhere else, but do the best you can to reset the expectations. Because all of us carry that burden on our back and we know when it needs or we believe we know when it needs to be done, and then somebody steps along and says no, we're not doing it. And it makes no sense to us, but it's just okay, let's recalibrate, but also still be persuasive and try to get the expectations reset. Because sometimes too, even though the community may want to go a certain direction or the electors may want to go a certain directions, you may find some information that can compel them to maybe postpone that effort and finish up what you have right now. And a quick story for me was this, we're in the process of building a new fire station. And that could be an emotional decision, and it is an emotional decision, for a lot of the community and electeds. And at our last strategic planning session, there was this big support. So this is with the council and the public, and it's kind of conversation where we were just in more of a community center than in the formal settings. And we were receiving direction to build, move forward with this thirty million dollars fire station. And in my comment, know, with all respectfulness as I could have, I said, we can do this. So I stopped and I joined the conversation, raised my hand, stepped up, said, we can do this. We can absolutely do this. Please keep in mind that when we do this, we are deferring a lot of a lot of work, all that pavement work we're gonna do, the facility maintenance work, because we're gonna we're gonna redirect all the funding to the fire station. And and that is something that that I support. Right? I'm here to build whatever whatever is the the council decides upon. But please keep in mind that that that's a significant amount of money. And with that and not having everything worked out, we're deferring millions and millions of dollars of payment, millions and millions of dollars of facility work for the next three to five years. But I have to get back to you with the exact number. And so what that did is it allowed us to at least pump the brakes a little bit. So we're working on the funding so we don't have to have that hit to all of our budget. And we also had a bunch of money redirected into paving and roofing. So sometimes it'll work. Maybe the only time in my career it works, but sometimes it'll work. Awesome. Yeah, in my cases, you know, it is a foundation. You have to have a baseline of where you're gonna build, you know, your plan. So that is, you know, it is critical to have something, you know, to build upon. The other thing is that, like Scott said, there are so many outside factors that could, you could have a detailed plan and you could have the funding, you know, assigned to it. And all of a sudden priorities change and you're like, okay, well now we're not gonna do that, we're gonna shift here. In our case is a little bit different than Scott because Scott has so many different types of buildings and know, and he deals with more of the city infrastructure. In our case is our priority is classrooms. So if I have to choose between a supporting building and a campus, well a campus is going to be priority. So you know that is defined and that is not going to change. So that is the logic behind you know whenever we're actually doing planning. The other thing that affects, you know, the outcome is, you know, how can you sustain a short range planning with a long range planning? And I think that's really difficult sometimes to do, especially with public entities just because of funding. You know? Like Scott said, you know, poly politics coming in. You know? Are we going to get a bond passed? I came to Waco as the I believe some it's going to be ten years now. The day that I got here, they told me don't do a whole lot of things at one of the high schools because we're gonna replace it. Well, fast forward ten years later, we finally got it replaced. But, know, Scott knows, he's laughing because he knows that this is this is something common. Know, you're like, well, okay, but I still have to maintain it. You know? So, you know, it it it is that we have sometimes to do almost magic, you know, to keep these things running because, you know, there's a long range planning of it's going to be replaced. But on the meantime, you're also held with the responsibility of, but you have to maintain it and keep it going for the next five, seven, eight years, whatever it takes in order for you to maintain that. And having that information, that piece of information, but also the additional factors that are coming in that does affect it, You know, data alone is not going to be enough. You know, there has to be all these conversations going on, you know, for you to be informed of what's going on, you as a director and especially with all the planning and you know, assets that are at the end of their life cycle, you know, how is that going to, you know, affect the long range planning, you know. For instance, if we replace a chiller, know, but that school is going be replaced within five years, but I do have to replace the chiller today because if not, it's not going to, you know, it's gonna be, you know, we're gonna have to basically pull that campus offline and it's not gonna be operational. Then how do you integrate that short range planning into the long range planning? You know, do you okay. We're gonna design a chiller system that's gonna be able to be used on a new school. How does that transition work? There's a lot of factors that come in and sometimes we're just thrown curveballs that it's like, you feel like you're getting hit from all sides and you're trying to juggle so many things that it's hard to just make decisions just based on data alone. Great answers. Guys, we got a bunch of questions coming in from the crowd. I know we are just about at time, so I don't want to force people to stay if they don't have time, but let's try to jump into a few of these questions if we can. I'll just try to read them out loud real quick. Arun, I'm going save you one about AI here to the end, that's probably one that we could talk a whole another session on, Gaynor, Gordon Smith, great question, and Ron, I think this is good, but Scott and Alex, you guys probably have a lot of firsthand experience with this. Data on overspending or cost projects, when an assessment is not done, right, and we just go out and we plan a project, I'm kind of thinking this, is like a real quick tangible ROI? If we have better data on things like what things are going to cost and what they should expect in their life cycles, how does that help limit some of those cost overruns by having that assessment data? Well from my perspective, have sometimes you have more seasoned and less seasoned staff. And, we're a smaller city, so we tend to lose our best staff to the bigger cities that can pay more and they coach our staff. So having that data, the short answer would be having that data gives a good starting point, what we can expect when we're we're forming our budgets, particularly looking back on projects that were completed as well as those ones that they maybe didn't that went a little sideways. That's a starting answer for me. Yeah, in our case, taking out the whole COVID season, that was just crazy, you know, how the market was just going all over the place. But, you know, I think knowing the data and knowing the, you know, having that replacement plan in place helps a lot. Also understanding where the market is, you know, not only regional, but also national, you know, and the shortage that of labor that's going to, you know, that is projected to come within the next three years, not because of, just because of a lot of probably fifty or sixty percent of that labor, especially in the trades and that knowledgeable and seasoned staff are scheduled to retire within the next three years, I think sixty or some say even seventy percent of that. And then the staff that is coming in to replace that or the people that are coming in to replace that is not really enough to basically replace that season and technical trades. Right? So what that is going to do is basically it's going to increase the labor because, you know, companies are gonna increase their their labor rate because they want to attract people because they're they want to do work. Right? So, you know, just understanding how the market is really behaving, I think also helps as far as, you know, understanding and really, you're not going to have a, like, set in stone answer for it. You know, cost could go up. I mean, just, you know, like crazy with all these things happening, but, basically, you can do projections. And, you know, Scott knows you you try to include in there, enough contingency to more or less take that hit if your projections are not, you know, within that range just because of outside factors. But it's not really, you know, doing projections in costs is really, you're just doing a guess estimate. You know, you're saying, hey, this is the probable cause today, you know, within two or three years, this could increase, you know, changing in refrigeration, you know, codes, you know, changing every three years, you know, code is changing. So all those things come into play whenever there's, you know, you're projecting costs and just understanding all of that, may help you have a more clear understanding of how that is going to affect the final cost. And just real quick, I reread Gaynor's and the other thing is, it it takes a little bit of pressure off the staff if you can I I understand what he's saying when you don't have it, because what what you're doing your best guess, as Alex was saying, and that best guess is based upon the staff you have working on it? Not we can't manage every single thing. We do our best. But if you can't get to get the facility assessment, at least it gives you a better starting point, a third party that you could point to as far as where that's at, which the closer obviously you get to your estimates, the more credible you are, the more potential you have of building on that credibility and gaining more funding in the future. Love it. And there are a couple extra questions. Arun, I'm going reach out to you independently. I've got some thoughts on the degradation and artificial intelligence and the question regarding technology and the existing assets. I'm actually going to send that over to the presenters Altaf, if I missed your name up, I will email you separately with an answer and anybody else that's interested I can email. But guys, thank you all so much. I'm sorry we ran out of time here, but Dan, I'll close it back or turn it back over to you just to close this out. Thank you, Luke, and thanks again everyone for the great information today. We appreciate Brightly Software for sponsoring today's event. If you want to learn more about them, please view the links in the related content module. And a reminder to attendees to receive your CEU certificate, you can download it from the EARN Certification module on your screen. This webcast also will be archived on facilitiesnet dot com slash webcasts. This concludes today's event. I'm Dan Hounsel, Senior Editor for the Facilities Market with Trade Press Media Group. Thanks to everyone for attending and enjoy the rest of your day.