I'm recently retired after serving as Associated Vice Chancellor for Capital Planning at Maricopa Community College District. At the height of college enrollments, a number of years ago, we were one of the largest community college districts in the country, serving nearly 250,000 students each year at 10 campuses and another dozen or so smaller education centers located throughout the greater Phoenix Arizona area.
Funding- with a capital F- always was the greatest concern. Capital funding for expansions and remodeling generally could be linked to growth or specific needs. Maintenance funding was an on-going nightmare, trying to keep millions of square feet in operation with only the barest of daily maintenance budgets and next to no preventive/anticipative budgets available. We finally were able to fund a PM and Facility Condition study to quantify how much, what, and where we needed preventive maintenance work for the next 20 years and convinced our Board to fund bits at a time to chip away at it. In the meantime, we always had to assure we had enough money to address emergency maintenance as things broke or were damaged.
Next, what kept me up at night was our Governing Board. We operated in a very politically conservative, generally anti-tax community, including our State government, that continuously reduced funding to higher education. It was an on-going battle with our Board to get approvals for funding capital and maintenance needs, often debating even minor purchases. I never could understand why someone would seek and serve in a public position at a public institution with a leading goal to starve the institution of the financial resources it needed, when the resources could be obtained for just an additional few dollars per household in additional tax support.
Someone also mentioned emergencies, like weather damage. We can't control that, but we can plan for it through disaster recovery exercises. That is critical for everyone in facilities. Table top an exercise of what will happen if one of your schools or locations is lost to weather or fire. In advance, plan where operations, employees, students, patients, prisoners.... will move to, emergency procurement processes, vendors that will be needed for emergency support and products. What would happen if you lost an important facility for short term- water line break, mold scare, and yes for all of us, closure for a crime scene in case of a shooting, for example. Where and how do operations continue for the week or so of closure we'll need? Can people work at home? Can they be moved to other locations? Do we have partnerships with local schools, churches, community centers, etc. that might provide some temporary space for us? Make those connections and arrangements now. Work on it all in advance- what would be needed. Is your IT department up to the task to make alternate network and system access available in an emergency to people working at home or at other locations, whether your own locations or temporary ones. You will sleep better with a little pre-planning.
------------------------------
Arlen Solochek, FAIA
Owner/Principal/Founder
Arlen Solochek FAIA, Consulting Architect
Phoenix, AZ
ArlenSolochek@gmail.com------------------------------