Solutions Center: Facility Inventory

Q: I am looking for a tool that will allow me to inventory my facility and project life cycles. This tool should be capable of tracking and generating reports for every aspect of building finishes and equipment. I am looking for something that can give suggested life cycles that are adjustable according to specific use. Included in this inventory will be wall and floor finishes, window treatments, furniture, signage, computers, data projectors, plants, vehicles, TVs and VCR/DVD players. I want to completely inventory every aspect of my facilities and use this tool to project budgets, as well as plan for construction.
— submitted by University Center Services, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

A: We are building our facility long-range plan using web-native software. Our schools were surveyed last year asking for current and future needs. These needs were broken down into capital needs and maintenance needs. We take the maintenance needs out of the web-native capital-planning system with a quick click on the screen and move them into a web-native work-order system. This has proven to be valuable in managing our daily work orders and future planning. We also are using a web-native preventive-maintenance scheduling system. We have inventoried all equipment in one of our high schools and the major systems at the other 18 schools and locations. We will be able to manage our planned maintenance, preventive maintenance as well as future replacement with these three programs.

This single website front-end solution is so valuable to us. Training is always an issue, and if we want our district to use this system, we need to make it simple. A single sign-in for users makes it easy to manage. They know how the systems work, so our data base and knowledge base grows every minute. Last year we had three separate standalone systems not accessed by our customers … today we are working off the web in a productive environment.
— Terry Taylor, Operations and Maintenance Supervisor, Gresham-Barlow School District No. 10Jt, Gresham, Ore.

A: Snoqualmie Valley School District, Wash., has been using web-native services for more than four years. In that time, we have gone from a very reactive maintenance department to a proactive department. The web-native programs have provided the tools necessary to proceed in that direction. The combination of a web-native work-order system and a web-native preventive-maintenance scheduling system has allowed us to keep a complete inventory tracking system on all equipment, which includes HVAC, custodial, maintenance and grounds. We are able to track the maintenance cost on each piece of equipment, along with the cost of maintaining our facilities by the square foot or by full-time enrollment. We are building a new elementary school to open next year. When asked to provide information on the operations cost of the new facility, by using the data that we had been gathering through these systems, I had the information at my fingertips.

The web-native capital-planning system has allowed us to establish a five-year plan where all of our capital, deferred maintenance and general fund projects are scheduled in advance. Before this, we were using a spreadsheet!
— Carl Larson, Plant Operations Supervisor, Snoqualmie Valley School District #410, Snoqualmie, Wash.