Supporting an educational and research leader
Edith Cowan University, located in Perth, Western Australia, takes its name from the first woman elected to an Australian parliament. Located across three campuses, covering 110 hectares and with a gross floor area of 190,000sqm, the University has a student population of around 23,000, in addition to 1,800 staff members. Notable alumni include the Oscar-nominated actor Hugh Jackman.
Offering over 300 courses across four faculties, the University has built a reputation for research excellence and houses a number of research centres within its key academic disciplines, with further building expansion underway. Over $34m worth of major capital projects were in progress during 2013, with a further $54m scheduled.
Developments include a significant extension to the University’s Joondalup campus, which will provide much needed space for a range of student amenities and free up space for research. The 5,500sqm ECU Health Centre, which includes the $22m state of the art Wanneroo GP Super Clinic, plays a key role in providing health care in Perth’s northern suburbs. Other projects include construction of additional student housing and a new 1,200sqm engineering pavilion. Although the University is renewing and expanding its estate, it also recognises the importance of maintaining existing facilities, in order to remain at the forefront of academic and research excellence. New and older buildings are covered in a 20 year asset management plan. The University’s facilities and services team participates in annual benchmarking across Australian and Asian universities through the Tertiary Education Facilities Management Association (TEFMA).
FM operations
The responsibility of mechanical, electrical, buildings and grounds maintenance lies with Buildings and Services Manager, Kevin Hall and his team of 35 staff, which includes engineers and contractors. The team is also an integral part of new building projects, and works with the Asset Delivery Manager to avoid potential management and maintenance problems down the line. One of the primary challenges for the Buildings and Services team is the need to implement process improvements and ensure that, as well as completing tasks efficiently, building performance information is captured.
FM software
In order to achieve this, the University implemented QFM facilities management software from Service Works Global in December 2010, replacing a maintenance management system with limited functionality that had been installed 16 years earlier. Information on over 6,200 assets is now contained within QFM and the software is used to manage reactive, planned and preventative maintenance as well as cleaning tasks from bases around the campus.
Intelligent scheduling tools within QFM allow the Buildings and Services team to schedule and manage planned maintenance activities, such as condition audits, for the University’s $1 billion portfolio of assets. Reactive maintenance requests come into a centralised call centre, where the details are entered onto QFM by the Help Desk Operator. The system allows the Help Desk Operator to assign maintenance tasks to the most appropriate Buildings and Services team unit and apply response and rectification times appropriate to the criticality of the request, to improve facilities efficiency and minimise impact upon students.
Hall explains, “QFM records and tracks all activity, including day-to-day reactive and planned maintenance requests. Entering it all on QFM significantly helps with prioritising workload and time management and it provides us with a complete audit trail. Unlike the earlier product used by the University, QFM has a powerful search engine.”
Meeting current and future needs
The software also aids Hall and his team in controlling backlog maintenance. Although a number of the buildings are ultimately due to be demolished as part of the strategic asset management plan, while they are still in use they need to be maintained. QFM intelligently prioritises contractors’ workloads, identifies duplicate jobs, to avoid wasted call-outs, and automates reminders to enable the effective management of repairs. Snapshot reporting of pending and overdue work orders allows managers to quickly assess the status and value of backlog maintenance.
QFM was recently introduced to the University’s Contracts and Projects Manager and is now being used
to add value to the management of the current cleaning contract. This has been a huge success and has enabled the University to track, monitor and review performance much more efficiently.
The University’s Spatial Information System is currently utilised to manage space resources across the
campuses, including move management and room bookings. The University is currently rationalising and
evaluating all technology solutions. As Hall comments, “As we seek to implement process improvements, we are reviewing the IT systems that we use to manage the University’s estates portfolio; the QFM Space module system will be considered as part of this review process.”
Reporting
When implementing QFM, a key requirement for the University was the need for facilities and estates
performance reporting, both at an operational and a strategic level. The comprehensive reporting capabilities provided by QFM were a key factor in the software’s successful selection. QFM generates monthly operational reports for the Building and Services team across four priority ratings. Priority 1 requests require a one hour response and a 24 hour fix, whereas a Priority 2 task has a 24 hour response time and a three day fix. The team has a 100% target for Priority 1 items. Should targets be missed, QFM allows the team to drill down into the details of the report to see why performance may have dipped for any particular service line or area. It provides Hall and his managers with insight into KPI performance and allows them to address operational issues, in order to optimise the efficiency of the Building and Services team.
Hall concludes: QFM allows us to rapidly identify trends and patterns upon which we can make decisions and drive future strategy. As a University it is our aim to achieve best practice in facilities management and QFM fully supports that goal. As the University’s estate expands, QFM allows us to meets the educational needs of our student community and reinforces Edith Cowan University’s reputation as a global academic and research leader.
