Vertex Capital Planning and Investment Analysis Software
The difference between Vertex and other facility decision support tools is that
Vertex is based on the engineered calculation of condition indices (CIs), which
provide objective, verifiable, and repeatable defect data. While, other programs
rely solely on the facility condition index (FCI) developed for the educational
market and are typically referred to as Capital Planning Management Systems
(CPMS).
Other systems document the opinions of data collectors who make the determination
regarding when assets need to be replaced and what the estimated budget is. With
this type of ‘subjective’ assessment, you can be certain that your analysis will
not compare ‘apples-to-apples’ across your portfolio. When you change assessors
you will get different results. Moreover, assessors may have built in bias that
will directly affect the results. Many of these ‘subjective’ based systems
simply store a rating of good, fair and poor or 0 – critical need, 1 – potential
critical need, 2 – future need 1 to 2 years, etc. Vertex’ calculated Condition
Indexes and resulting optimized action recommendations are based on facility
engineering standards that have been used for over 30 years, not someone’s
opinion. You can be certain that the data you are analyzing is consistent and
objective and the resulting plans and forecasts are optimized and of the highest
confidence level. With Vertex, you, not someone else, make the decisions that
drive your financial future.
The financial modeling of most non EMS-based systems amounts to prioritizing
projects based on the assigned ‘subjective’ condition rating and estimating the
project costs based on the assessor’s opinion of what it will take to fix all
deficiencies for each asset. These systems document general descriptions of
building problems at a point in time and their systems do not project condition
of the asset in future years or after maintenance projects are completed. For
these reasons, other systems and methodologies routinely generate non-optimal
plans. They will instruct you to correct all deficiencies; even those that
deliver no added value and projected replacement schedules and costs are simply
based on the opinion of the assessor.
Typically, project costs and priorities that are developed using a “Subjective”
or “Consultant based” collection of deficiencies fail to consider the many
variables that would make the project to repair the deficiencies or the
timing of a replacement unwise. One must be able to consider the benefit or lack
of benefit versus the cost of the project on various objectives simultaneously
to make the optimum business decisions.
For example, a project to replace a detached flashing on a roof may appear to be
a valid project. However, an EMS approach would uncover the fact that
degradation of the membrane has naturally occurred due to age, with no
significant repairable defects to the membrane identified. Using EMS metrics,
the condition of the roof would not be significantly improved by making the
repair and the recommendation would be to ‘Do Nothing’ to the flashing at this
time and schedule the roof section for replacement at the optimal time in the
near future. The EMS-based approach would reveal that any money spent on
membrane or flashing repair at this time is a waste of funds.
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