Harnessing the Power of Benchmarking: The Edge Your Institution Needs for Campus Planning

In today’s competitive higher education environment, it is more important than ever to make strategic capital planning decisions that will best position your institution to thrive. Facilities leaders rely on a variety of tools, data and assessments to help them in the management of campus assets. In a time where funding is limited and competition for students is increasingly intense, it can be difficult to know if you are making the right decisions.

What’s a facilities leader to do? Thriving facilities are critical to the success of an institution. They represent some of the most valuable assets an institution possesses, yet they are often chronically underfunded. Having the right, data-driven insights and informed guidance can help accurately convey needs to campus leadership so that appropriate funding for maintaining and improving campus facilities can be obtained.

Learn how Lorain County Community College harnessed the power of benchmarking to decrease energy consumption and address backlog.

Gordian’s Return on Physical Assets (ROPA) solution provides the data, contextual understanding and strategic recommendations needed to steward facilities in the most effective way possible. Its analytical framework ensures alignment of space, capital and operational needs through dialogue with campus stakeholders. This helps ensure that facilities investments best serve the campus community.

ROPA can turbocharge campus planning in a number of ways. First, an analysis of campus space, capital and operational performance provides an objective view of historical performance. Second, a detailed look into your facilities’ lifespan, spending patterns and average growth of deferred maintenance provides an accurate projection of future investment needs, which in turn helps align funding with high priority projects. With this complete understanding of historical performance, institutions have a baseline for putting campus needs into context and justifying facilities decisions.

Third, access to the largest verified college and university facilities database available enables you to examine how your campus’s performance aligns with market trends. Your baseline performance can be compared to a group of peer institutions, so you know exactly how you stack up against them and can improve your competitive edge with facilities.

“When we have senior administrators and faculty members on our budget advisory group asking, ‘Why are we paying for this instead of that?’, it’s easy to justify our investment practices and priorities with the data and comparative insight we get from Gordian.”

— Pamela Elliot Cain, Senior Vice President for Operations and Finance, Iowa State University

Financial and enrollment constraints, coupled with changing student needs and desires, continue to cause widespread challenges for campuses across the county. Successful facilities leaders must balance needs that are underfunded, aging physical spaces, service expectations of stakeholders and growing deferred maintenance backlogs, all while making informed decisions about which projects and investments should be prioritized. With Gordian’s ROPA solution, campus leaders can turn data into action to ensure the best return on facilities investments.