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Case Study - Industrial/Commercial

Technology Solution
Altus Capital Planning (ACP), through the use of TCPS® has been instrumental in the development of strategic and tactical Lifecycle based Capital Asset plans for the industrial/commercial sector. ACP recognized that Capital Renewal plans tended to be managed on a year-by-year basis which did not allow participants in the Industrial/Commercial sector to take advantage of leading edge Capital Planning strategies and practices. A largely short-term planning approach to long-term asset preservation requirement frequently resulted in Commercial/Industrial building service and process equipment disruptions that had to be remedied quickly and often at additional cost.

Business Solution
One of the largest communications companies in North America commissioned ACP to develop a comprehensive funding renewal strategy for a variety of building types. This diverse portfolio encompassed approximately 50 million square feet of space, in over 9,000 distinct building sites and extending across five mid-western States.

The client had three major objectives it wanted to achieve by using ReCAPP®. The first objective was to rank a current list of projects in accordance with a pre-established priority algorithm. Projects were then grouped so they could be managed by geographical business areas. Given the client's large organizational structure, the challenge was to understand the communication requirements between line and staff in multiple departments. This was necessary in order to ensure that ReCAPP® would be accessible for local Area & Operations Managers responsible for individual buildings, while simultaneously ensuring that the data was accessible to Technical Managers responsible for systems extending across the entire building portfolio.

Secondly, it was essential for ReCAPP® to map to other existing information sources including lease/owned tables, personnel & property manager databases, design and construction databases, etc. This process ensured that multiple internal and external agencies responsible for managing day-to-day events, monthly budgets, yearly forecasts and construction planning were able to communicate effectively during both the planning and execution phases. Thirdly, the client needed an "approval-tracking" capability that would afford managers at all levels in the organization full visibility of the budget status of approved projects.

Highlights
ReCAPP® was introduced into this organization and, in close cooperation with the client, all the above objectives were attained. Data was collected and assembled for each building by the local Operations Managers, then prioritized and sorted to create an awareness of both current and future funding requirements for the entire portfolio. An Oracle compatible ReCAPP® database was installed in the client's technology environment with active data used to manage and track existing and future budgets. All capital and expense projects were entered and logged in ReCAPP®, and extensive report formats were provided via the ReCAPP® Report Manager module. ReCAPP® - based short and long-term "facility renewal" strategies, created as part of this overall project, have allowed this organization to move closer to a fully proactive Capital Planning environment.

Additionally, the client has been able to formulate a solid business case to justify a significant increase to the annual facility Capital renewal budget. This increase in available renewal monies represents a more prudent approach to the management of Capital to deal with fundamental building deficiencies. It has been acknowledged that a percentage of these deficiencies, if deferred for too long, could surface as emergency repair events requiring the expenditure of unplanned premium charges to remedy the deficiencies and potentially even higher costs in business interruption due to facility failures and subsequent regulatory fines.