Goals:

		To communicate the importance of regular facilities maintenance program evaluation
		To recommend best practice strategies for evaluating facilities maintenance efforts

• Evaluating Your Maintenance Program
• Considerations When Planning Program Evaluations
• Collecting Data to Inform a Comprehensive Evaluation
• Examples of Good Evaluation Questions
• Commonly Asked Questions
• Additional Resources
• Evaluating Facilities Maintenance Programs Checklist

Over the years, experienced facilities maintenance planners have learned to ask some very good evaluation questions, some of which are listed below. Some questions may not apply to every school district, but the list illustrates the types of questions that facilities maintenance planners can ask to meet the information needs of their evaluation efforts.

Work Orders

		Does the work order system account for all maintenance staff time and materials?
		Does the work order system produce data about the history of all maintenance activities at each site?
		Does the work order system track all purchases, from ordering through delivery, storage, and installation?
		Does the work order system document all preventive maintenance activities?
		Is priority recognition available to differentiate between emergency, routine, and preventive maintenance?
		Do preventive maintenance activities outnumber emergency responses in the work order system logs?
		Is user feedback documented through work orders, surveys, or minutes of stakeholder meetings?

		Does the needs assessment include a mechanism for collecting, analyzing, and prioritizing input from users?
		Does the needs assessment include data from the work order system?
		Are stakeholders (e.g., maintenance staff, educators, users) included in needs assessment and capital planning activities?
		Does the needs assessment include information from the work order system?
		Does the needs assessment include information from site and equipment inspections?
		Does the needs assessment include data from performance and systems audits?
		Does the needs assessment include commissioning and retro-commissioning results?
		Does the needs assessment include comparisons with peer organizations?
		Does the needs assessment reflect outstanding regulatory or compliance issues?
		Are safety checks based on documentation and incident reports?
		Is an annual facility plan created from the needs assessment?

		Are inspectors adequately trained for their task?
		Are there clear standards for inspections?
		Are inspections conducted with both property needs and maintenance capacity in mind?
		Are all inspection results documented?

		Does the data management system document the current status of the major systems and components in every school building?
		Does the data management system document the capital and maintenance needs of every school building?
		Does the data management system document the short- and long-term needs of the district?

		Does the budget request accurately reflect the needs of the annual facility plan?
		Are there both short- and long-term budget objectives?
		Are maintenance staff involved in developing the budget?
		Does the annual budget reflect the inevitability of unplanned emergency maintenance issues?
		Are there contingency plans in the budget?
		Are industry standards used to estimate costs?
		Does the budget include funds for new hires, contracting, and equipment and supply purchases?
		Is the financing plan for long-term capital needs separate from the maintenance budget?

		Does the personnel policy include maintenance and contracted staff?
		Do job descriptions reflect the identified needs of the organization?
		Do job descriptions outline the necessary qualifications to perform the work?
		Does the organizational chart accurately delineate reporting responsibilities?
		Are training opportunities available and relevant to the duties of the staff?
		Are all tradespeople fully licensed for their work?
		Are industry guidelines used to determine custodial staffing needs?
		Are cost-benefit analyses conducted to determine staff/contracting needs?
		Is cost-benefit analysis based on numbers of available staff, skill levels or training needs of existing staff, and the type of job?

		Are staff performance evaluations performed on a regular schedule?
		Do data drive staff performance evaluations?
		Is there follow-up to staff performance evaluations that includes additional training opportunities, reassignment of staff, changes in job duties, contracting out duties, and hiring of additional staff?
		Are staff accomplishments reviewed and documented on an annual basis?
		Are staff accomplishments measured in part by comparing budget estimates to actual expenditures?
		Are staff accomplishments measured in part on the basis of work order system records?
		Are staff accomplishments measured in part by personnel evaluations?

Facility Plan

		Does the facility plan provide for periodic reports of staff accomplishments to stakeholders?
		Are staff accomplishments related to the objectives stated in the annual facility plan?
		Were all facility plan objectives met?
		Was reprioritization of objectives needed to meet goals?
		When goals and objectives were not met, was the reason for this failure substantiated?
		Were cost estimates sufficient to meet the objectives?
		Were other aspects of the budget negatively affected to meet maintenance objectives?
		Were staffing levels sufficient to meet the objectives?
		Are the goals and objectives of the facility plan reprioritized based on actual budgets received, number of emergencies, school shutdowns, complaints, safety issues, school days lost or sick days increased, negative inspection reports, loss of accreditation, compliance, regulatory or legal action, impact on capital plan or long-term plan, staff overtime, staff turnover, or the impact on other planned projects?
		Are unmet goals and objectives documented?
		Are unmet goals and objectives included in the next planning cycle?

Commonly Asked Questions

Doesn't "evaluation" take precious resources from actually maintaining facilities?
Absolutely. However, without earmarking funds for evaluation, there is no way of knowing whether the money, time, and energy going into facilities maintenance efforts are producing worthwhile results. After all, the only thing worse than "wasting" part of the maintenance budget on evaluation is wasting the entire maintenance budget on activities that aren't really working.

What tools are available for maintenance program evaluation activities?
An "evaluation tool" is any means by which an organization can get accurate and timely information about the status of its facilities, and any improvements that are a result of the maintenance program. In addition to the services of outside evaluation consultants, potential tools available to a school district include: work order records, major incident reviews (e.g., the number of school shutdowns, safety events, etc.), "customer" feedback from building principals and other stakeholders, weekly foremen's meetings, visual inspections by supervisors and managers, comprehensive management audits, focused operational reviews, performance audits, organizational studies, reengineering projects, annual snapshots (e.g., cost per square foot or per student), facility report cards, comparisons with "peer" organizations, benchmarks, measured progress toward the organization's long-range plans, external audits and peer reviews, staff turnover rates, and public opinion (e.g., newspaper articles).

Who is in charge of evaluating the facilities maintenance program?
Program evaluation is the responsibility of the facilities manager. However, because facilities are such a key aspect of an organization's overall budget and mission, other senior staff should be included in evaluation oversight as appropriate to ensure sound management and planning. Moreover, many school districts employ in-house staff with considerable expertise in program evaluation who may also be able to contribute to the process.

Additional Resources

Every effort has been made to verify the accuracy of all URLs listed in this Guide at the time of publication. If a URL is no longer working, try using the root directory to search for a page that may have moved. For example, if the link to http://www.epa.gov/iaq/schools/performance.html is not working, try http://www.epa.gov/ and search for "IAQ."

APPA Custodial Operation Self-Analysis Program
http://www.appa.org/pdffiles/AllCustodialAnalysis.pdf
A survey and self-analysis tool designed to identify many of the variables that influence institutional custodial operations. It also establishes standardized benchmarks for the industry. APPA (1998) The Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers, Alexandria, VA, 15pp.

FMEP: Facilities Management Evaluation Program
http://www.appa.org/FMEP/
A program to provide the chief facilities officer at APPA member institutions with the opportunity to receive an evaluation by a team of APPA members from organizations with similar educational, financial, and physical characteristics. This document is designed to help an institution assess the value of this program and the commitment required to conduct such an evaluation.

Evaluating Facilities Maintenance Programs Checklist

More information about accomplishing these checkpoints can be found on the pages listed in the right-hand column.