To make progress against deferred maintenance backlogs, institutions need the support of leaders across campus. The first step is to help diverse stakeholders understand how deferred maintenance hinders their strategic priorities and goals, while making the backlog both tangible and comprehensible. For example, many Facilities leaders have used building tours and capital renewal reports to make deferred maintenance real for campus partners.
To help accelerate efforts to inform stakeholders about deferred maintenance, use the “Tackling the Deferred Maintenance Crisis” executive brief. This short document explains deferred maintenance in non-technical language for executives and makes the case for greater investment.
Our Board of Trustees has many priorities: They don’t have the time to delve into the details of deferred maintenance. I used your materials in my annual presentation, and it helped capital renewal resonate with them in a way I hadn’t previously seen.
Associate Vice President for Capital Planning and Budget, Large University System
A crucial step in addressing deferred maintenance is gaining an accurate picture of asset condition to guide project prioritization and capital investment decisions. Facilities leaders must determine which metrics will lead to the most meaningful information for their campus. Then they must establish systematic ways to collect and analyze that data either themselves or by hiring a third party.
Institutions should develop project prioritization matrices that allow leaders to identify both operational and academic priorities for individual renewal efforts. Robust ranking systems incorporate data from a wide range of strategic metrics while also facilitating transparent comparisons between specific projects.
Both the challenges and goals of capital renewal planning vary across different time frames, especially when renewal funding is unpredictable. EAB recommends Facilities leaders leverage different strategies to create adaptable renewal plans for short-, mid-, and long-term maintenance needs.
Capital renewal funding to address deferred maintenance is often inadequate, as other institutional priorities compete for increasingly limited resources. Given the magnitude and pervasiveness of the issue, institutions are searching for new ways to obtain more dollars for renewal. While there are no silver bullets for tackling a large backlog, Facilities leaders can learn from 100 creative tactics that colleges and universities have used to successfully fund capital renewal projects. These tactics, supported with case studies and estimates of financial impact, include maintenance endowments, energy gainsharing, and alternative revenue approaches.
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