Understanding the Status Quo
The City of Asheville currently budgets $1 million per year to maintain its almost 1 million square feet of city-owned buildings. With more than 70% of buildings more than 50 years old, city engineers knew they needed more money to properly maintain facilities—but they needed data to communicate those needs.
Because the city’s facilities maintenance staff was already successfully using Brightly’s Asset Essentials to manage work orders, it made sense to work with Brightly’s Predictor to make predictions about the future of those assets. The first step was to work with Brightly to undertake a comprehensive facilities condition assessment (FCA) to evaluate the condition of all the city’s buildings.
“I chose Predictor because it allowed us to use our existing assets that were already in Assets Essential; we didn’t have to build the data twice. We were able to take that existing asset information as a basis to feed into Predictor to do the modeling, and we could easily inventory everything and put it into the same vertical. Using another Brightly product allowed us to get a comprehensive FCA within our limited budget.”
Walter Ear, P.E.
Division Manager, Public Facilities Management
Making the Case for Increased Funding
In October 2023, Ear presented to the Asheville City Council findings from the facilities assessment. The FCA gave the city’s infrastructure a grade of C, but using Predictor, Ear and his team were able to show how the current $1 million annually for facilities maintenance would not be enough to even maintain the C grade. Without additional funding over the next two decades, the data showed that many of the city’s existing buildings would reach a “failed state,” Ear says.
The software program also provided data showing how increased funding for preventive maintenance could increase the lifespan of many of the buildings. Ear’s data convinced City Council members of the need for $3.5 million annually just to maintain the status quo of municipal buildings, reported the Asheville Citizen Times.
The facilities assessment will form the basis for long-range capital planning and mapping a future plan while prioritizing and sequencing maintenance. In addition to the FCA, City of Asheville leaders are also relying on staff priorities and space needs to make decisions and set priorities for capital funding, Ear says.
For example, of the city’s 13 fire stations, only three were built in the 21st century. To determine which fire stations need to be replaced or renovated, facilities leaders talked to fire department leaders about their priorities and which stations are the busiest. They studied whether they need to keep stations in their current locations or relocate to busier areas, Ear says. As a result of all the data and study, at least one aging fire station will be replaced and moved to a new public safety complex, which will be one of the city’s first construction projects.
Moving Forward
Looking to the future, Asheville plans to expand its use of Predictor into other asset classes. “It’s CMMS-agnostic, so we can take assets out of another program and also use them in Predictor,” Ear says.
While Asheville has much work to do to get facilities in grade-A shape, the facilities assessment and predictions made possible with Asset Essentials and Predictor “puts us lightyears ahead of where we were,” Ear says. “Systems require people, so we need to continue to maintain, observe and learn to get the best use out of it.”
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