The Case for School Funding Starts with a Smarter Facilities Condition Assessment
“How much money are you spending on MY school? I want to make sure my tax dollars are being used efficiently!”
When taxpayer dollars are on the line, they must be accounted for.
As a Facilities Condition Assessment (FCA) data expert for K-12 schools, Cherie Chenoweth is used to being under the gun. She’s been working to justify funding requests for local, federal and private education facilities for over 30 years.
“When you’re doing an FCA manually,” Chenoweth says, "The data is ALL over the place! Pictures are often not labeled to the correct asset, and you have to decipher the story. Or they aren’t attached to assets or connected to locations, and the data is not structured. It took HOURS to re-enter the data into an FMP format or project management system, for the FMP and dashboards to read correctly.
“Also, we would get a ‘data dump’ when moving between two systems that weren't connected. For example, they're doing submittals, and we would get hundreds of them all of a sudden, because that is when they were put into the system.It was a slog!”
Traditional Facilities Condition Assessments are Failing K-12 Schools
Even with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars per institution, FCAs/FMPs are often checked off the list and tucked into a drawer or put on a shelf. And they're outdated before they get finished.
Because of disorganized traditionally manual processes, project owners often find themselves responding to a “data dump” at the end of the project, hunting through unstructured data in hopes that warranty information or manufacturer specs are in there. (And was that in an email, a spreadsheet, a PDF...?)
Challenges and risks with traditional FCAs include:
Unlabeled photos that are not connected to assets
Duplicate data entry when unstructured data is re-entered into other systems
Delays in reporting due to “data dumps” at the end of the project
Warranty information is not readily available and maintenance work voids the warranty
Blind spots in project prioritization
This leads to wasted time, reduced transparency, missed opportunities and inaccurate planning.
“Another major risk is going over budget,” Chenoweth says. “The staff in the office doesn’t understand what’s going on in the field. If you don’t have a good system, you can’t see everything together. Communication and transparency are huge for doing effective projects—you can save time in reporting and track everything.”
Making the Shift to Continuous Facility Condition Assessments
A static, traditional FCA is a snapshot in time that quickly loses relevance and must be redone every few years.
A continuous facility condition assessment (C-FCA) is a living document that is continuously updated as projects evolve. This approach helps project owners avoid risk—AND avoid repeating the expensive process! The process helps identify projects that need to be done.
A digital tool like Kahua’s Continuous Facility Condition Assessment lets project owners tag pictures to assets and assets to projects, track warranties and system statuses and enter standardized data in real time that can be easily moved into other systems.
Why Does Continuous FCA Matter to Project Owners?
One program manager Kahua spoke to said that he was contacted repeatedly by the project owner, after the project was completed, because the operations team could not find drawings or warranty documents. The program manager wanted to keep a good relationship with the owner, so they took on the hunt for documents at their own expense.
This went on for YEARS.
In addition to avoiding major headaches, an FCA may be required in some states. In California, for example, schools, utilities companies and other state entities are required to perform an FCA to qualify for state funding.
“You have to go to the board, be approved. And the FCA gathers the data to tell the story and make your case,” Chenoweth says. “Kahua's C-FCA app helps collect asset data, pictures, etc.”
Owners can eliminate the “data hunt” at the end of each project by collecting asset data from Day One. This makes for a smooth, fast handover and sets operations teams up for success.
Benefits of Taking an Asset-Centric Approach to FCA
When you think of FCA as a continuous process, you can manage the end-to-end lifecycle of each asset and support your school facilities holistically. Using Kahua’s C-FCA app:
Data is directly linked to individual assets and locations – instead of digging through files, facilities teams can search by name, scan a QR code in the field or pull up details from a dashboard.
Data is complete, organized and easy to use – not just a pile of PDFs. It is searchable, sortable and connected to business processes.
Asset data can be audited and integrated with an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system and a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), all before your school facility is operational.
Additionally, owners can leverage powerful analytics to make smarter decisions with structured, integrated asset data.
Kahua offers real-time dashboards to track performance overtime, understand which assets have the highest cost, optimize maintenance, reduce downtime and plan for future capital projects.
“Owners get complete asset records before they turn on the lights,” says Chenoweth.
Get Out-of-State Districts and Vendors Onboard with Your C-FCA
As anyone who works with a group of stakeholders knows well, you need to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get onboard and actually use the tool or process.
If your educational institution is multi-state, different districts may not use the same software or datasets. The same goes for your vendors.
Using Kahua’s C-FCA, that’s not a problem. Project owners can grant limited Kahua access to vendors and subcontractors who don’t have Kahua.
Additionally, information in Kahua integrates with other Project Management Information Systems (PMIS), such as Autodesk, DocuSign, Bluebeam, Sage, Power BI and many others.
“Most companies are multi-state and different school districts might use different systems,” says Chenoweth. “Start with baby steps there.”
In addition to data capture and asset tagging, Kahua’s FCA functionality includes asset scoring, scenario planning, geolocation and condition and lifecycle data.
Shift to an continuous FCA method to aid short-term execution and long-term operations ... and save the surprises for the students' birthday parties!
See how Kahua’s FCA app can keep your educational facilities running smoothly.