6 min. read
Government buildings are essential community structures with complex systems requiring careful monitoring and maintenance to function optimally. Municipal preparedness is key to keeping these buildings operating efficiently and effectively, and providing a healthy and safe environment for those who occupy the spaces.
However, many facility owners and managers share the challenge of maintaining assets that have a finite useful life span. Too often, the focus remains on the short-term needs of buildings and occupants, so when expensive replacements such as roofs, boilers, and ventilation systems among others become a necessity, the funds aren’t always readily available to pay for them.
A comprehensive master facility plan, also known as a capital plan, addresses all occupant needs, including technology, space use, and programming demands. An effective master facility plan for municipalities can identify funding options and help facilitate project prioritization.
What to Include in Your Master Facility Plan
1. Vision and Goal Setting
Master facility planning starts with clearly defining your organization’s vision and goals. This can be completed by engaging with key stakeholders through workshops and surveys to gather input, helping to ensure that shared values and priorities are included. It may also be beneficial to research innovative designs in your specific industry to understand how others are utilizing and making the most out of their spaces. Your vision and goals should focus on creating the ideal environment that supports the health and safety of your occupants and community while also operating efficiently to effectively meet your needs.
2. Current Facility Conditions and Improvement Needs
Benchmarking is a vital part of capital planning. Before moving toward your end goals, you must first understand your starting point. Conducting a thorough facility condition assessment and analyzing those results will help you:
- Identify opportunities for improvement that can boost performance and potentially save money.
- Prioritize your investments by gaining an understanding of your facility’s needs and determining where best to allocate your limited resources.
- Make informed decisions backed by collected data and doing a comparison against industry standards and best practices.
Best practice dictates the first step is to conduct a facility condition assessment of existing buildings, grounds, and infrastructure. The assessment will analyze a building’s condition as it relates to its age, design, construction methods, and systems to identify improvement opportunities This will also identify critical repairs, potential upgrades, and energy improvement opportunities to lower utility costs.
In addition to the facility condition assessment, a technology infrastructure analysis should be undertaken to identify opportunities for strategic integration of facility space to enhance collaboration, boost functionality, and support your organization’s long-term goals.
3. Design and Development
Once you’ve completed an analysis of your existing assets and systems, you can then begin to outline the design and development for necessary improvements. This might include system upgrades, equipment replacement, re-design of rooms, etc. For municipal or community centers, it might even be creating flexible spaces for hubs that can be utilized for various events, meetings, etc. Having a partner with experience in efficiency and space utilization design helps provide a clear path to your desired outcomes.
As you look at design and development within your master facility plan, it’s important to also consider your facility’s accessibility, safety, and security. Consider what design aspects or changes should be made to ensure all occupants can easily access your facilities, and what safety measures and security systems should be installed and implemented to protect those using your space.
4. Implementation
Lastly, you’ll want to outline the implementation of your facility improvements and how you’ll sustain the space moving forward. This may require a phased approach, allowing for long-term implementation that includes prioritized projects and a timeline for renovations, new construction, and infrastructure upgrades.
5. Funding
With limited resources and budget, securing necessary funds may be critical in order to proceed with these projects. There are various funding options, such as public grants, private partnership, utility rebates and incentives, and community fundraising campaigns for which you can apply.
At SitelogIQ, our team of finance experts can help you identify the best funding strategy for your project and help you through each step of the application process.
Considerations for Ongoing Facility Management
Once your master facility plan is created, it’s important to have a strategy in place to continuously update it—at least on an annual basis. These annual reviews should be sure to include any changes to your organization’s facility goals, a current facility condition assessment, details on upcoming improvement projects, and any funding that has been secured and how you plan to allocate it to upgrade your space.
As you plan for ongoing facility management and planning, some solutions to consider include:
- Energy: One of the most important improvement aspects is establishing a sustainability program for local government facilities. Government facility managers may also help develop on-site energy generation programs.
- Indoor comfort: Indoor comfort, lighting enhancements, and ergonomics are other main areas of improvement for governmental buildings. Facility managers can improve overall air quality, temperature control, and humidity regulation.
- Community service: Local government building managers can help develop irrigation and water management and savings programs. Additionally, facility managers can focus on enhancing the efficiency of transportation services and strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other forms of pollution.
- Resiliency: Resiliency is crucial for municipal facility managers striving to enhance building site reliability. An essential element of this is evaluating the building’s existing systems, including filtration, ventilation, and indoor air cleaning technologies.
- Cost savings: Municipal facilities management also involves realizing various cost savings, including reducing general fund expenses, identifying available funding programs, and reducing utility costs and usage.
Keeping your master facility plan up to date will allow you to effectively manage your buildings, ensuring that they are safe, efficient, and resilient—both now and in the future.
Your Master Facility Planning Partner
Through a partnership with SitelogIQ, we will collaborate to identify, prioritize, and address your organization’s specific building needs and form and execute a thorough long-term strategy with our proven capacity to deliver a return on your investment. This strategic guidance can help you upgrade existing facilities to create and maintain resilient and future-ready spaces to meet occupant needs.
Our master facility planning software, mySiteIQ, can also help you easily organize your facility assets and data, prioritize short- and long-term projects by constructing and comparing scenarios, and optimize your facility’s performance to ensure efficient projects.
Contact us today to start creating your capital plan, creating a safer, healthier, and more sustainable space for your occupants and community.