The Financial Challenge of Higher Education Facility Management

Campus facilities are an important part of any college and university experience, but in recent years higher education has been faced with shrinking budgets, smaller grants, and fighting to keep tuition increases at a minimum – meaning that facility managers are faced with the task of keeping up with their growing facility costs as the budget gets smaller.

This challenge is not an easy one to tackle, and facility managers at these institutions have been dealing with them for well over a decade. The facilities costs for a public university have grown over 20% in the past ten years, and that’s only going to continue to grow. So what can be done to help manage this paradox?

Data Collection
Having accurate and updated data is essential for your systems to work and for you to make the right decisions. Take the initiative to collect data on your buildings, equipment, assets, etc. so that you are working with the right details.

Replace Legacy Systems
Do you have old-school CAD data? Do you have rolls of drawings still laying around? Are the books of logs? Anything that you are doing now that was done in the 70’s most likely needs an update. Take advantage of digital information and systems that can save you time and money.

Process Improvements
Do you have to different places for asset data? How do you track changes to the facility? Minimizing the places that you store information and the different processes required to work with that data will help improve efficiency and give you a simpler process. When there are simpler, more efficient processes, the result for the facility manager and their team is indirect cost recovery, better planning, and better insight into your facility’s needs!