Rice Earns High Grades with CAFM

It's a common misconception that academic institutions are exclusively concerned with the abstract, the theoretical, and the unworldly. While it's certainly true that colleges and universities exist to promote the pursuit of knowledge and the development of higher order thinking, these activities nonetheless require a supportive physical environment. When it comes to facilities management, an institution of higher education is not so very different from its corporate counterpart. An academic campus consists of dormitories, cafeterias, sports facilities, classroom buildings, administrative and faculty offices, libraries, laboratories, even the President's residence-all of these physical spaces must be designed, built, heated, maintained, renovated, budgeted for.

Keeping Track of the Ivory Tower
Rice University's 57 buildings, which house some 1,800 university employees, a student population of over 2,600 undergraduates and approximately 1,425 graduate and professional students, add up to over three million square feet. That's quite a bit of "Ivory Tower" to track and maintain!

Mark Wells, Architect and Maintenance Planner, recalls that in the past, Rice's space information database consisted of Excel spreadsheets (one spreadsheet per building). Its drawings were hand-drafted. Needless to say, the drawings and spreadsheets were not integrated. Worse still, neither had been updated for several years. As Patricia Seller-Wolff, currently Architectural Records Analyst in the Facilities and Engineering Department puts it, "We were not able to give the administration an accurate representation of our facilities."

The lack of reliable data precluded any completely realistic strategic planning. Since an academic institution depends on its ability to provide an environment, both intellectual and physical, which fosters the life of the mind, a reliance on guesswork can be a recipe for disaster. Furthermore, with three new buildings slated for construction, specific, detailed space information was not a frill but rather an imperative. The Department decided that automation was the way to go.

It Pays to do Your Homework
Knowing that the stakes were high, Wells and his colleagues conducted some serious research before settling on ARCHIBUS. In fact, in keeping with the slow and deliberate tradition of academe, they studied at least ten facilities management software programs over the course of a year.

ARCHIBUS was the top scorer. As space planning professionals, they were especially impressed with the fact that ARCHIBUS was the market leader and an Autodesk partner. Having chosen their candidate, they presented a proposal to the Rice administration, urging the adoption of ARCHIBUS as a much-needed planning and organizational tool.

Putting CAFM to the Test
With the blessing of the administration, the team began the process of putting those floor plans (updating as they went along) into AutoCAD and linking all of the data to the ARCHIBUS system. Although this task required about three years to complete, no one has any regrets. The results have been well worth the effort.

Seller-Wolff reports that she can provide clear, precise, easy to understand information about the University's current space usage because the data is available to designated users in each division of the University. These users can access space data and some equipment information via Rice's web pages. Should they require specific building information and floor plans, they can enter these sites by using a password.

Right now, the facilities managers are the ones who have been updating most space information as changes occur. They are the ones who have been performing the database adjusting when a building is remodeled or when departments move. Once yearly, also, the FM staff has been inputting smaller changes such as individual employee moves. Although these users are mostly academics, not trained facilities managers, the system is so intuitive that, with only a modicum of training, they can become real partners in the task of managing the University's resources efficiently.

ARCHIBUS is furnishing a means of communicating between the FM department and all sectors of the campus community. Best of all, the communication is two-way. Once a particular group is made aware of the amount and type of space that it has, it can better communicate its needs to the FM department. So, for example, if the Fine Arts Department needs to change its spatial configuration so as to implement the latest instructional strategies in Studio Art, they can clearly delineate the changes that need to be made. The FM team can, in turn, check the design team's remodeling plans to ensure that those plans meet these articulated needs.

Another feature that makes the system A+ for Seller-Wolff is that it allows her to compare her data to that of other institutions of higher learning. She can do so because the space data is produced in standardized formats. She can, via the Internet, access the FM data of public universities to see how they allocate their space. She believes that this knowledge is very useful in the planning of campus growth because she can pass along her findings to the University's Space Planning Board.

Definitely Dean's List
Although Universities generally do not perform chargeback in the manner that commercial organizations do, they do track indirect space cost. More importantly, in terms of the educational mission of such an institution, accurate reporting of space utilization is necessary in order to secure funding for research. For Rice University, ARCHIBUS has become an indispensable weapon in the battle for precious research dollars.

The money saved through intelligent management of resources translates into better equipped labs, library books, comfortable dorm rooms, state-of-the-art sports facilities, the latest PC technology, and faculty grants. While these physical appurtenances do not of themselves bestow greatness on an academic institution, they furnish the means whereby greatness is made possible.