Just do it

We have now been talking, it seems forever, about the need to implement serious property asset management.

More and more people I talk to are now saying just do it! In fact most add another word which I will omit here.

Where to start then? Data - but that is expensive and time consuming to collect. Perhaps there is a cheaper yet effective approach to managing data collection.

There are three principles that should drive any data collection strategy:
1. Move forward in an incremental way with each stage providing results that are an improvement on the previous situation
2. Make sure each stage in the incremental strategy is a step towards the desired final solution
3. Ensure data can be refreshed simply as part of business as usual.

I remember one client who adopted this approach to improve the economic sustainability of their estate. Unfortunately there was little coherent data to support this process. The estate was varied in terms of property size (23,000 to 14 m2), age (18th to 21st century), use and servicing (including laboratories, swimming pool and offices). Although there were nearly 150 properties in the estate, 30 of them accounted for 80% of the GIA. Therefore a 10% sample survey of these larger properties was carried, choosing properties that represented the various size, age, use and servicing characteristics of the whole estate. The data from the survey and backed up with consultations with the in-house team was used to model the other properties. Based on the results of this model a further 10% of properties that had not already been surveyed with the highest priority for action were identified and surveyed. This second 10% tested the robustness of the model as well as providing data for reworking the model.

The reworked results were used to populate the database differentiating between the actual and modelled data. This data was used to develop the first draft of the strategy for economic sustainability of the estate. As with all asset management documents it is dynamic and is regularly updated as the data is refreshed through post project handback and ongoing surveys. The policy for on-going surveys is to carry out annual assessments on about 20% of the estate based on the performance of the property, age of survey and reliability of data. A matrix such as the one below can be used to identify the urgency of assessments:

*or since remodelled
Red is the urgency for modelled data and green for surveyed data

In this case the surveys were assessing condition but the same approach can be applied to all the asset management assessments such as energy, occupancy, suitability and compliance