Higher education vertical infrastructure maintenance planning

A major concern facing American higher education is finding the resources necessary to renew and renovate the existing physical facilities. Pressure on budgets makes it difficult for facility officers to obtain the needed financial resources without documentation that is understandable by non-technical people. Renewed growth of student populations has the potential to make future deferred maintenance problems greater still. The cyclic nature of building maintenance must also be reflected in resource requests. Tools to identify vertical infrastructure maintenance needs are examined for accuracy against observed conditions at a large regional public university. Data developed for US Army facilities is utilized in three different ways to identify whether such data will be accurate in higher education facilities. The application methods explored are selected to utilize as much data as possible that is familiar to non-technical people while still providing a reasonable reflection of changing annual needs. The selected model is accurate within ten percent, a similar level of error when compared to the physical assessment techniques used. The model is also useful for planning purposes to identify future resource needs as well as to document costs for overhead charges.