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Facility Condition Assessment History
In the fall of 1997, the VISN 6 leadership contacted the Chief Facilities
Management Officer inquiring whether Office of Facilities Management (FM)
could provide the professional technical staff to assist them in performing
a Facility Condition Assessment (FCA). Consulting Support Service (183A)
representatives met with VISN staff and jointly researched, evaluated, and
discussed various methodologies and reporting mechanisms being used by both
private and public entities in performing facility wide capital plant
evaluations and assessments of their various systems and equipment. This
effort resulted in a FCA approach that utilized a multi-disciplinary team
of architects and engineers, working in close conjunction with, and
receiving valuable input and assistance from facility engineering staffs,
that visited every Medical Center in the VISN to perform the survey.
The voluminous information gathered was then input into a FCA database
for that VISN, identified by building, system and system condition. Each
system has an associated cost for repair or replacement where needed. The
VISN needed this critical information in a uniform and comparable form to
plan, manage and direct VISN wide capital plant resources against identified
needs in an intentional and consistently managed approach across their
individual system. The FCA has enhanced capabilities for management to
compare capital facility needs across the VISN and has proven an invaluable
planning tool.
A FCA tool provides the VISN and VAMC with a professional assessment of
their capital assets that facilitates and enables their uniform and fair
planning and expenditure of resources across their VISN and/or VAMC. The
FCA tool enables and ensures a uniform basis for system wide planning
decisions and facilitates the identification of emergent needs.
To date FM has completed the FCA for nineteen VISNs, covering 2340 buildings
and over one hundred and nine million square feet of space. FM is currently
proceeding to complete the remaining five FCAs in support of the VHA CARES
initiative.
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