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Case Study - Education

School Boards

Technology Solution
Altus Capital Planning (ACP) has assisted numerous School Boards with the development of their long-range facility renewal planning. In virtually every case, the individual Boards were limited in their ability to project and substantiate their future capital needs beyond the next few years, although intuitively, they felt that there was already an accumulated backlog of capital renewal. Significant concern was also expressed that the current funding formula from which capital re-investment flowed was insufficient to sustain schools at an appropriate level of condition going forward.

Business Solution
ACP was retained by one of the largest consolidated urban School Boards in North America to generate a long-range strategic capital plan for nearly seven hundred elementary, middle and secondary school facilities encompassing nearly 60 million square feet.

In existence were a wide variety of facility ages and conditions as represented by the former independent and separately managed Boards. As a result of the rationalization, many of the more experienced custodial and technical staff who were knowledgeable about the facilities had either retired, been released or had been relocated. In essence, much of the "corporate knowledge" was no longer available to assist in the development of go forward Capital Planning activities.

The process of introducing ReCAPP® into this Client environment began with the creation of a lifecycle condition model sensitive to the type, age and physical dimensions of each unique school. Upon completion of this phase, actual condition data (A, M&E) that the Client had recently amassed was introduced into the model to make it more reflective of the current condition of certain key components.

Once inputted, the Board contracted, through PPT, three technical field teams who were dispatched to verify the condition of those components identified in the model as having the potential to impact on the capital renewal plan within the next five years.

In total, nearly 100,000 future capital renewal events were reflected in the database extending over the next 50 years. The entire process, as described above, required approximately six months to complete and PPT also assisted in the preparation of the final report exhibits that were presented to Board officials and the Trustees.

Highlights
A final hand over of the ReCAPP® system, together with the final verified database installed in Oracle, was accomplished without any disruption to the Client's internal network configuration. ReCAPP® has tangibly assisted the Board in reconstructing much of the institutional knowledge that was lost during the amalgamation process.

This information is now current and actionable by the Board to create a five-year capital plan. Additionally, a comprehensive strategic plan was created to address the potential gap between the current level of annual renewal funding in relation to current and future capital renewal needs.