Smarter Facility Capital Planning: Top 4 Must-Haves for Your Plan

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From deteriorating buildings, outdated infrastructure, and severely stretched resources – neglecting to establish a capital plan for your organization’s facilities can negatively impact the health and safety of occupants. 

Enter facility capital planning, your strategic approach to optimizing asset management. This comprehensive method, often referred to as master facility planning, helps to uncover facility needs, identify inefficiencies, and prioritize maintenance improvements. With capital planning software, you can allocate resources, promote sustainability, and remain aligned with your organization’s goals and vision for long-term success.

Developing a Comprehensive Capital Plan

Knowing where to start and what to include in a capital plan is a common hurdle for many organizations. We’ve developed a simplified list of the top four planning principles that will increase the likelihood of achieving your organizational goals.

Capital planning starts with clearly defining your organization’s vision and goals. This can be completed by engaging your 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 their spaces. Your vision and goals should focus on creating the ideal environment that supports the health and safety of occupants while also operating efficiently to effectively meet your needs.

Benchmarking is a vital part of your capital plan. –Before moving toward your end goals, you must first understand your starting point. Conducting a thorough assessment and analysis of your buildings’ current states 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 data collected and a comparison to 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 assessment 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.

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. These may include system upgrades, equipment replacement, re-design of rooms, etc. For K-12 school districts or community centers, this may include creating flexible spaces for learning both indoors and outdoors, or community hubs that can be utilized for various events, meetings, etc. Having a partner with experience in efficiency and space utilization design helps clear the path toward the outcomes you’re looking for.

Within the design and development section of your capital 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 measure and security systems should be installed and implemented to protect those using your space.

Lastly, you’ll want to outline the implementation for your facility improvements as well as how to create a sustainable space. 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.

As you work through your implementation plan, also consider researching funding opportunities to finance this work. There are various funding options, such as public grants, private partnership, 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.

Your Trusted Capital 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.

mySiteIQ, our technology-enabled platform, 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.