Building Assessment
A formal condition assessment that ends in a number rather than a narrative. Every system rated, aged against its expected life, and priced for what it would take to put right, resolving into a facility condition index that can be set against other buildings and against the year before.
- A facility condition index, calculated, with its bands stated
- Remaining useful life per system, worked out rather than estimated
- A consequence of deferral against every capital line
- The assessment method recorded, because it changes the number
Building Assessment
Condition, costed
| # | SYSTEM CONDITION | AGE | REMAIN | COND. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Roof covering and rainwater, installed 2009 | |||
| 2 | Heating and hot water, original to the building | |||
| 3 | Electrical distribution, partially renewed |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this building assessment is for
One assessment, and three readers who each stop at a different number.
Whoever carries out the assessment
System by system with an expected life, an age and a deficiency cost. The discipline is pricing what it would take to put each one right, because that is what the index is built from.
The owner or finance committee
You read the index and the band, then the capital forecast. The consequence column is what stops the forecast being treated as a list of nice-to-haves.
The estates or asset manager
Remaining life per system is your planning horizon. It tells you which renewals land in the same year, which is usually the thing nobody sees coming.
Whoever compares buildings
The index normalizes condition against size and value, which is the only way a small building in trouble and a large one in good order can be ranked honestly.
Where a condition index earns its keep
The systems are common to most buildings. What changes is how long the horizon is and who signs the capital. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- Education
Long-held estates with long horizons, where the index across a campus is what allocates a fixed capital envelope between buildings.
Campus maintenance software - Commercial real estate
Acquisition and disposal, where an index and a five year forecast are part of how a building is valued rather than just maintained.
Portfolio maintenance software - Healthcare
Estates where a Critical system is an operational continuity problem before it is a capital one.
Healthcare maintenance software - Corporate facilities
Owned headquarters buildings, where the assessment usually exists to answer whether to invest, refurbish or move.
Corporate facilities software - Retail and malls
Portfolios with many similar buildings, where ranking by index decides which sites get the year's capital.
Retail maintenance software - FM service providers
Advisers producing assessments for clients, where stating the method is what makes the number defensible.
FM service provider software
What a building assessment should contain
A building assessment is a formal condition survey that resolves into a single index rather than a narrative. Each system is rated, aged against its expected life to give remaining life, and priced for the deficiencies found, with the total set against current replacement value to produce a facility condition index and a capital forecast.
A. The sections that carry the weight
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment details | Who assessed it, when, and by what method | Method is the field that makes the index comparable. Visual, intrusive or a mix produce different deficiency totals on the same building. |
| Building profile | Type, year built, area and current replacement value | Replacement value is the denominator of the index. An out of date figure understates the index every year nobody revisits it. |
| System condition | Each system with its install year, expected life and age | Assessing by system rather than by element is what lets remaining life be calculated, because a system has a service life and a wall does not. |
| Remaining useful life | Expected life minus age, calculated per system | Converts a condition rating into a year. It is also what reveals several systems landing in the same renewal window, which is the expensive surprise. |
| Condition rating | Good, Fair, Poor or Critical, spelled exactly | Counted by the summary. Rating and remaining life are independent: a system can be in fair condition and still be near the end of its life. |
| Deficiency cost | What it would take to put each system right | The numerator of the index, built system by system. A single total typed at the end cannot be defended line by line. |
| Systems by condition | Counts of good, fair, poor and critical | A four-number summary of the building, and the count of poor and critical is what usually drives the recommendation at the end. |
| Facility condition index | Total deficiency cost over current replacement value | The output. One percentage that can be ranked against other buildings and against this building's own previous assessment. |
| The condition bands | What the index number actually means | Stated in the file so the percentage is not left to interpretation, because an index without its bands is just a number. |
| Capital renewal forecast | System, work required, year, cost and priority | Turns the assessment into a plan. Grouping by year is what shows the peaks rather than a flat annual average that never happens. |
| Consequence of deferral | What happens if each capital line is not done | The column that protects the forecast. Without it a capital plan is a shopping list, and shopping lists get halved. |
| Findings and position | Backlog, immediate attention, limitations, and whether to keep investing | Where the assessment says what it thinks. The limitations field is where the method's blind spots are recorded honestly. |
An index quoted without its method is not comparable with anything, and this is the most common way condition assessments mislead. A visual assessment sees what can be seen: it finds the failed roof covering and the corroded pipework in the plant room, and it does not find the deteriorated waterproofing under a terrace or the condition of buried drainage. An intrusive assessment opens things up and routinely produces a materially higher deficiency figure on exactly the same building, because it finds what the visual one could not. Neither is wrong, and the cheaper one is usually the right choice. What is wrong is ranking a visually assessed building against an intrusively assessed one and treating the gap as a difference in condition, when a large part of it is a difference in method. The file asks for the method at the top and for the limitations at the bottom for this reason, and both fields are worth filling in properly because the number they qualify will outlive the report.
B. What it looks like filled in
The index on a six thousand eight hundred thousand replacement value office building, assessed system by system. Eighteen systems, and the band is the part people read.
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Systems assessed | 18 |
| Rated Good and Fair | 7 and 6 |
| Rated Poor or Critical | 5 |
| Total deficiency cost | 462,000 |
| Current replacement value | 6,800,000 |
| Facility condition index | 6.8% |
Six point eight percent sits in the fair band, and the interesting part of this assessment is not the index at all. Fair is an unremarkable position for a building of this age and would not, on its own, start a conversation. What should start one is that five of the eighteen systems are rated poor or critical while the index still reads fair, which happens because the index is a money ratio and says nothing about distribution. A single critical system with a large deficiency and seventeen sound ones can produce the same percentage as a building where everything is mildly tired, and those are completely different problems with completely different capital profiles. This is why the file counts systems by condition beside the index rather than instead of it. The other number worth holding is the five year capital forecast, which on this building is eight hundred and ninety thousand against a four hundred and sixty-two thousand backlog: the forecast is larger because it includes renewals that are due rather than deficient, and confusing those two is how a capital plan gets built twice.
Word for the version that becomes a report, Excel for the one that calculates remaining life, the condition counts and the index, with a Portfolio Index tab holding one row per building so an estate can be ranked, and PDF for issue. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you carry out a building assessment?
Decide the method before anything else, because it governs what the deficiency figure can mean. Then work system by system. Six steps.
Record the method, then the building profile
Visual, intrusive or a mix, plus type, year built, area and current replacement value. Method decides what the index can be compared with, and replacement value is what it is divided by.
Work system by system, not element by element
Each of the systems with its install year and expected service life. Systems have service lives and can be renewed; a wall as an element does not behave that way.
Let remaining life calculate itself
Expected life against age gives remaining life per system. Read the results together rather than one at a time, because the useful finding is usually several systems reaching end of life in the same window.
Rate the condition and price the deficiency
Good, Fair, Poor or Critical, spelled exactly, then what it would take to put that system right. Rating and remaining life are independent and a system can be fair and nearly finished.
Produce the index and read it against the bands
Total deficiency over replacement value. Under five percent is good, five to ten fair, ten to thirty poor, over thirty usually beyond economic repair. Read the condition counts beside it.
Build the capital forecast with a consequence on every line
System, work, year, cost, priority and what happens if it is deferred. The consequence column is the difference between a capital plan and a list that gets halved.
A formal assessment versus a condition walk
Two condition documents that get confused, on very different cycles. One produces a capital number and the other keeps you honest between them.
| Aspect | This formal assessment | A quarterly condition walk |
|---|---|---|
| What it assesses | Systems, with service lives | Elements, as they present today |
| What it produces | An index and a capital forecast | A condition score and a defect list |
| How often it runs | Every few years | Quarterly |
| Who carries it out | A surveyor or assessor | Somebody who knows the building |
| The horizon it works on | Five years and beyond | Until the next walk |
| What it cannot tell you | Whether the exits were clear today | When the roof reaches end of life |
They are complements on different clocks, and the walk is what makes the next assessment cheaper. A formal assessment is expensive, produces a number that finance can act on, and is out of date the month after it is issued. A quarterly walk costs a morning, produces no index, and keeps the picture current in between. Run only the assessment and you are working from a snapshot that ages; run only the walk and you never get a figure anybody will fund against. A run of walks is also the best possible brief for whoever does the next assessment, because it tells them where the building has actually been moving rather than where it happens to be on the day they visit.
When the template starts to feel limiting
The file is built for one building assessed periodically. Four things start to hurt as soon as that is not the shape of the problem.
One file per building, per assessment
The Portfolio Index tab ranks buildings once somebody has transcribed each one into it, which is a manual step that quietly does not happen.
The index ages from the day it is issued
Every renewal and every failure moves the deficiency figure, and nothing updates it until the next assessment is commissioned.
Replacement value drifts
The index is a ratio and the denominator goes stale. A valuation from several years ago inflates the index without anything about the building changing.
The forecast and the work are separate
Capital lines are planned here and delivered somewhere else, so the assessment cannot tell you which of its own recommendations were ever carried out.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The assessment still needs doing. What changes is that condition stops being a snapshot that ages from the day it is issued.
Asset Intelligence
Systems carry their own condition
Rating, remaining life and deficiency attach to each system, so the position moves as work is done rather than waiting for the next commissioned assessment.
Audit Report Intelligence
The index stays current
Because deficiency is held against systems, a renewal completed this year is reflected instead of leaving the index describing a building that has since been repaired.
Work Order Intelligence
Capital lines can be tracked to done
A forecast line is linked to the work that delivers it, so the next assessment starts from what was actually carried out rather than from a recommendation list.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Renewal clusters surface early
Several systems reaching end of life in the same window is visible ahead of the year it lands, which is the single most expensive thing to discover late.
Hallucination-free by design. Atom AI answers from the records in your tenant rather than generating plausible text, so an empty field reads as empty rather than filled in for you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a building assessment?
A building assessment is a formal condition survey that ends in a number rather than a narrative. Each system is rated, aged against its expected service life to give remaining life, and priced for what it would take to put right.
Those deficiency costs are totalled and set against the building's current replacement value to produce a facility condition index, which is what allows one building to be compared with another and with itself over time.
What is the facility condition index and how is it calculated?
It is total deficiency cost divided by current replacement value, expressed as a percentage. In the worked example, 462,000 of deficiencies against a replacement value of 6,800,000 gives an index of 6.8 percent.
The bands stated in the file are under five percent good, five to ten fair, ten to thirty poor, and over thirty usually beyond economic repair. Quoting the index without the bands leaves the number open to interpretation.
Why does the assessment method matter so much?
Because a visual assessment and an intrusive one produce materially different deficiency figures on the same building. A visual survey cannot see buried drainage or waterproofing under a terrace, so it finds less and reports a lower index.
Neither method is wrong and the cheaper one is often the right choice. What does not work is comparing a visually assessed building with an intrusively assessed one and reading the gap as a difference in condition.
What is the difference between a building assessment and a condition walk?
An assessment is carried out every few years by a surveyor, works system by system with service lives, and produces an index and a multi-year capital forecast. A condition walk is quarterly, covers elements as they present today, and produces a condition score and a priced defect list.
They run on different clocks and answer different questions. A run of walks is also the best brief you can give whoever carries out the next assessment.
Can a building have a good index and still be in trouble?
Yes, and it is the most common misreading of the number. The index is a money ratio and says nothing about how the deficiencies are distributed.
A building with one critical system and seventeen sound ones can produce the same index as one where everything is mildly tired. That is why the file counts systems by condition alongside the index rather than relying on the percentage alone.
Why put a consequence of deferral against every capital line?
Because a capital forecast without consequences reads as a list of preferences, and the first thing a finance committee does with a list of preferences is halve it.
A line that says water ingress and damage to finishes below is a different conversation from one that just names a roof and a number. It also makes the decision to defer an explicit one rather than a quiet one.
How often should a building assessment be carried out?
Every three to five years suits most buildings, with the interval shortening as the index rises or as more systems approach end of life. The file asks for a recommended date for the next assessment on every report.
A major refurbishment, an acquisition or a disposal usually triggers one regardless of the cycle, because the index forms part of how a building is valued rather than only how it is maintained.
Is the capital forecast the same as the deficiency backlog?
No, and confusing the two is how capital gets planned twice. The backlog is what it would cost to put right what is deficient now. The forecast includes renewals that are due because a system is reaching the end of its life, whether or not it has failed.
In the worked example the five year forecast is 890,000 against a 462,000 backlog, and the difference is renewals that are coming rather than deficiencies that exist.
In one paragraph
A building assessment is a formal condition survey that resolves into one number. Record the method first, because visual and intrusive surveys produce different deficiency figures and an index without its method cannot be compared. Work system by system so remaining life calculates itself, price the deficiencies, and read the index against its bands with the condition counts beside it. Then build the capital forecast with a consequence of deferral on every line.
The assessment is the floor, not the ceiling
Commission one every few years, keep the replacement value current and run a quarterly walk in between. Once the index is aging faster than you can reassess, or you cannot tell which of last cycle's capital lines were ever delivered, the report has done its job.
