“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.”
Henry ford
Efficient life-cycle management of the built environment in the public sector has remained an elusive goal. It is also a regularly mandate that has simply not been met by most Federal, County, State, and Local Governments.
The process is well defined and requires a process focused environment and associated robust information management and decision-support capabilities.
While technology vendors (BIM, CMMS, CAFM, IWMS…) often claim to have solutions, Technology isn’t the solution. The reality is that fundamental process change is the only path to significant improvement with respect to physical asset life-cycle management.. The barrier is a simple one. Organizations are being limited by internal managers and “experts” that are mired in the past. Individuals that seek to perpetuate their own “success” by “kicking the can down the road”. These are no ignorant professionals, They are, however, self-serving, and have no qualms about putting their career goals ahead of those of their organizations, or most importantly, ignoring their responsibilities to taxpayers.
Robust collaborative, LEAN planning, procurement, and project delivery methods have existed for decades that can drive productivity gains ranging from 20% to 50%+. They are now available with fulls suites of tools and services. Implementation of these capabilities has been limited to less than five percent (5%) of public sector real property owners, with and even smaller group doing so “properly” and/or on a consistent organization-wide basis.
Failure to adopt these proven processes in support of efficient stewardship of the built environment should surprise anyone. The GAO has issues multiple reports on the topic over the past forty (40) years. The significant negative economic and environmental impacts has been well documented.
The timing as to when public stewardship of the built environment will occur remains an unknown. Until then, collaborative, efficient planning, procurement, and project delivery solutions will remain largely unused. Integration of people, processes, information, and enabling technology will remain a dream as will financial transparency and sound financial management.
via Four BT, LLC – www.4bt.us – Four BT, LLC (4BT) is the AEC industry’s innovative integrated project delivery, construction cost data, and SAAS technology provider. We help guide organizations to achieve accelerated improvement of their facilities repair, renovation, and construction outcomes through the development of a culture and client-specific program centered upon delivering customer value, and driven by proven LEAN processes, actionable data, enabling cloud technology, and ongoing training.
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