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Best Facility Sustainment, Restoration, and Modernization Practices

This appendix lists best practices for the planning and programming, budgeting, and execution of funding facility sustainment, restoration, and modernization (FSRM) needs of existing facilities.

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR FSRM MANAGEMENT

• Ensure that the entire Office of Facilities and Property Management (OFPM) staff and all facility users/stakeholders engaged in FSRM decision making and facility capital planning have continuous and easy access to common, accurate and up-to-date asset data.
  • Ensure a closed-loop and end-to-end process from initial asset acquisition through disposal. This includes managing asset data in the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), aligning with asset data in BUILDER SMS and providing a seamless data exchange with project management applications to feed new asset data back into the CMMS and BUILDER sustainment management system (SMS).
• Manage the data in a dynamic format. In today’s environment there is a need for a higher degree of flexibility in both office and laboratory space. The new hybrid work environment and dynamic portfolio management require software solutions that can manage asset data in a more dynamic way.

PLANNING AND PROGRAMMING FUNDING REQUIREMENTS FOR FSRM

• 4 percent of Current Replacement Value (CRV) is a National Research Council (NRC)-sanctioned rule-of-thumb for minimum required sustainment for buildings only, with specific guidance that it is a minimum that is best supplemented with funds for deferred maintenance and repair (M&R) backlog reduction, backlogged and projected restoration and modernization needs, and funds to pay the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s institutional support (IS) tax. It is ill-advised to use 4 percent of CRV to determine minimum sustainment requirements for utility distribution and collection systems or information and technology (IT) infrastructure. Using 4 percent of CRV as the sole component of annual FSRM funding need can yield budget requests that are significantly less than what could otherwise be justified.
• The use of physical condition metrics and M&R backlog as sole indicators of facility status and annual FSRM funding requirement addresses only a part of the needs equation. Metrics and backlog of functionality deficiencies make up the other part.

• Accurate current and future gross/net area, CRV of existing facilities is critical to calculating FSRM funding requirements and facility condition and functionality indexes. Inaccuracies and inconsistencies in CRV calculations are often cited as soft spots in the practices of determining and budgeting for FSRM requirements.
• Establishing performance standards for physical condition and functionality of existing facilities is beneficial. There are well-established cost analysis techniques to determine costs of keeping a facility above a minimum target performance level.
• A continued working relationship between OFPM and Engineer Research and Development Center-Construction Engineering Research Laboratory’s (ERDC-CERL’s) consultant is essential to expedite correcting BUILDER’s shortcoming in cost estimating. Future BUILDER implementation and use will prove more impactful if OFPM continues working closely with ERDC-CERL and its consultants.
• BUILDER SMS has the capability to undertake systematic collection of user functionality issues and to translate those issues into FSRM funding requirements.
• “Backlog” amounts and metrics require constant attention. Pay particular attention to FCI (facility condition index) numerators, which should contain only backlog amounts for correction of sustainment and restoration deficiencies (routine component life-cycle maintenance and repair). Use BUILDER’s Building Condition Index (BCI) and its Functionality Index (FI) as metrics to track backlog for correction of facility performance deficiencies.
• Short- and long-range programs and plans, such as the 2020 Integrated Master Plans Implementation Report and it’s intended replacement (the draft 2022 Infrastructure Plan), as well as project documents (e.g., programs of requirements) all need to include coordinated requirements for FSRM of both existing facilities and for new facilities or altered footprints of existing facilities after acquisition. Systematically integrate annual expenses in routine maintenance and repair (sustainment and restoration) with the large investments periodically needed to modernize.
• It is best to refrain from including any factors that modern risk managers have abandoned (e.g., arithmetic operations performed on ordinal numbers derived from Likert scales) in pre-budget, risk-based prioritization models.

BUDGETING OF FSRM REQUIREMENTS

• Practices for obtaining funds to meet identified and demonstrated FSRM needs are more effective when integrated with proven additional practices that objectively identify, assess, predict, and communicate to senior leaders the precise, strategic consequences to mission accomplishment implied by the lack of sufficient funds. Such practices include:
  • Recognizing that 30 years of “backlog analytics” have contributed to a great gap between senior leaders’ awareness of funding needs for FSRM and the actual funding for reducing backlogs of deferred FSRM work. Also acknowledging that arguments based on deferred backlogs alone have proven inadequate for raising funds, and that organizations would benefit by better linking proposed investments in facility FSRM to mission accomplishment.
  • Improving senior leaders’ response to FSRM funding requests by presenting the case in clear terms of strategic risk and risk mitigation. Narrowing the gap between acknowledged need and funding allocations by changing the primary approach from “give us more FSRM funds in order to reduce the backlog” over to “give us more FSRM funds to reduce specific risks to mission.”
• Experimentation with reframing the deferred backlog issue by augmenting current practices with modified and additional practices already developed and successfully used by others:
  • Continuing facility condition assessments. This will further bolster the current level of senior leader awareness of the M&R backlog issue. But consider expediting the implementation of BUILDER SMS and resolution of its cost estimating issue in order to cut assessment costs and improve process and product credibility.

• • Expanding use of BUILDER SMS to perform facility functionality assessments. Engaging programmatic subject-matter experts and facility users (researchers) in structured dialog that systematically identifies deficiencies in room and space functionality. Enlisting building users to serve as allies in mission-risk assessment and communication of mission-risk and FSRM needs to senior leaders.
  • Using NRC-recommended approaches to predict and communicate to senior leaders the specific strategic consequences to mission performance of unfunded deficiencies in physical condition and functionality. Augmenting traditional “backlog analytics” with “mission-risk analytics.” Applying risk-based approaches to link organizational performance and facility performance found in NRC’s Predicting Outcomes from Investments in Maintenance and Repair of Federal Facilities (NRC 2012). Also considering the use of the newer version of Mission Dependency Indexing, as well as the “bowtie technique” and facility user confidence indexing in efforts to reframe the backlog issue for senior leaders.
  • Employing NRC-recommended analytic deliberations (NRC 1996), the main process for facilities leaders to collaborate with facility users and senior leaders to objectively identify, assess, and manage the precise, strategic risks implied by results of the assessment of facility condition and functionality.
  • Encouraging or even requiring research program officials to communicate with senior leaders regarding future, minimum annual funding levels for the organization’s existing facility portfolio and the mission consequences if those minimum funds are not allocated and spent on FSRM of existing facilities.

BEST PRACTICES FOR EXECUTION OF FSRM FUNDING

• It is best to refrain from including any factors that modern risk managers have abandoned (e.g., arithmetic operations performed on ordinal numbers derived from Likert scales) in post-budget, risk-based prioritization models.
• There is always room for improving practices for converting project budget justification documents into project design and construction documents to ensure the resolution of user concerns with facility functionality are completely addressed.

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