This story was first published in the July/August edition of inspire magazine. 

Three years ago, Ku-ring-gai Council signed up for an IPWEA Buildings.PLUS subscription. The decision was a proactive effort to improve the way building assets were managed.

“The council lacked asset knowledge of its buildings and generally worked reactively when components failed,” Andrew Heathcote, Building Asset Coordinator for Ku-ring-gai Council explains.

“We had no catalogue of the conditions of our components or the number of plant and equipment supporting the site, nor were we able to update and record on those components that had been either renewed or upgraded.

“We had no sense of direction to achieve backlogs or replacement programs and knowledge was driven from the staff themselves.”

Heathcote describes Buildings.PLUS as a ‘one stop shop’ for compiling building asset data and housing photos, plans and diagrams, reducing the need to visit sites and conduct desktop enquiries.

“The mobile application that comes with Buildings.PLUS is also very helpful in reducing administration time and providing site auditors with real-time capturing of asset information,” he says.

Located in Sydney’s leafy North Shore area, Ku-ring-gai Council is home to about 118,000 people, placing it in the ‘large council’ category of the Buildings.PLUS system.

Heathcote says the council has loaded 220 asset sites (libraries, depots, community halls, administration buildings to name a few) into Buildings.PLUS, a process that took about 18 months as a part time activity.

“Once the council was able to resource the support requirements for capturing the data in- house, we worked through a three-stage process based on asset types,” he explains.

“This included quantity surveying, conditioning auditing, capturing various plant and equipment numbers, taking photos of the components and writing up any urgent maintenance requirements to place into the following year’s capital maintenance program.”

Since then, Heathcote says the council has reaped a range of benefits from the subscription. 

Ease of componentisation 

“Buildings.PLUS has allowed the council to be able to prioritise components and look at bundling capital works into a single program for each component group,” Heathcote says.

“For example, we reviewed one of our more critical component types such as roofing. We produced programs to replace gutters and down pipes that were past their end of life and were in poor condition.”

Ability to identify and address backlogs 

“Once the council understood the community’s expectations for what would be a suitable condition for buildings (referred to as a Condition Grade Index or CGI), Buildings.PLUS then provided the council with an easy assessment of the backlog. Components below the expectation of ‘Condition 3’ (components in poor to very poor condition) are the backlogs to work through, and became priorities,” Heathcote says.

Creating more accurate RFQs and tenders 

“The information in Buildings.PLUS has allowed us to budget for the cost of replacement, and has also provided relevant information for Request for Quotes (RFQs) or Request for Tenders (RFTs) that improve realistic contractor submissions for the costs to achieve the works,” Heathcote says.

“Furthermore, the ability to place relevant industry component replacement rates into Buildings.PLUShas allowed the council to review submissions and judge if those submissions are providing value and correctly understand the scope of works, thus removing at lot of risk to the process and review.”

Improved the level of reporting 

“Buildings.PLUS is very flexible, providing standard reporting such as ‘summary reporting’, which presents a professional template outlay and provides relevant details on current condition, future costs and backlogs to an asset, assisting the building asset team with impartial data that supports priorities,” Heathcote explains.

“This particular report is heavily utilised to provide the right information to facilities managers, senior management and councillors. The lifecycle modeling is very useful to see the potential future funding requirements and provide budget estimates to assist with five to ten-year plans. Furthermore, Buildings.PLUS allows you to export data into a CSV to allow for any custom type reports.”

Three years on, and Heathcote says Ku-ring-gai has no plans to stop using Buildings.PLUS.

“Buildings.PLUS is a great opportunity and first step for organisations to start capturing building asset Information and condition data for very little cost, allowing time to trial and utilise some of the reporting capabilities the system can offer,” Heathcote says.

“Once in place, it reduces a lot of assumptions and risk to managing your building asset portfolio and improves communication with various stakeholders on valuable, yet simple information at a component level.”

What is Buildings.PLUS?

Buildings.PLUS is an organisation-based subscription program that allows organisations to manage a diverse range of building assets (now including parks, open spaces and community/social housing). The Buildings. PLUS online tools, web-based condition survey tools and asset planning system were designed specifically for the complexities of buildings.

The Buildings.PLUS online tools, provided and supported by SPM Assets, provide an analytical solution, enabling asset managers to effectively assess the condition and performance of their assets and to efficiently formulate the priorities of physical works.

Feedback from IPWEA’s training workshops triggered the need for Buildings.PLUS. Practice Note 3 was written to provide guidance to property managers on how to undertake assessments and lifecycle analysis – this generated a need for an application that could easily enable the process. As a result, SPM Assets and IPWEA created Buildings.PLUS, a lite version of SPM’s commercial software used across NZ, Australia and South Africa by all levels of government.

For more information or to request a free trial, visit ipwea.org/buildingsplus