New building asset management guidelines
A new Practice Note for Condition Assessment and Performance Rating of Buildings has been launched by the National Asset Management Strategy Group (NAMS.AU) of the Institute of Public Works Engineering Australia (IPWEA).
These Practice Notes have been developed to assist practitioners in applying best practice for condition assessment of building assets. The aim is to foster a national approach and encourage consistency of data and outputs.
The guidelines have been the subject of more than 12 months’ work with input from building asset management practitioners from around Australia and New Zealand. They are valuable for Local Government, public works or other organisations (public or private) that rely on a number of buildings and related properties throughout their overall asset portfolio.
The intent is that these guidelines will provide Practitioners with the necessary principles and processes to be able to carry out condition and performance assessments of buildings and surrounds with the main outcomes being:
- identifying and establishing a register of
buildings and breaking them into
components - condition assessment to rate each component
and estimate remaining useful life - current (or capital) replacement cost (CRC)
and depreciated replacement cost (DRC) - risk analysis based on condition to predict
the timing of future renewals and replacements of building components - reporting including a buildings summary
report, component schedule, valuation report,
and an expenditure profile - where specified, quality assessment to
determine the building’s performance
measured against quality standards - work schedules (maintenance, renewals and
new works) and long term financial planning
data.
The guidelines include a ‘Toolkit Section’,
which provides access to a downloadable set of spreadsheets from the NAMS.AU website that allows use of proformas for data collection and condition scoring. There is also a renewal analysis spreadsheet that can produce a renewals expenditure profile cycling up to 100 years.
There are also financial tables in spreadsheet form to develop all operational and capital expenditure proposals with due account of the prioritisation steps to provide input into the long term financial plan of the organisation.
Building Component Guidelines are also included for the Australian building industry and cover 90 per cent of the most common building components.
The IPWEA NAMS.AU Practice Notes for Buildings are a valuable new resource for all asset management practitioners who have responsibility for the management of buildings in their portfolio.
A comprehensive sample document is available for free download at www.ipwea.org.au/practicenotes. Practice Notes are also available for footpaths, cycle ways and kerb and gutter/channel.
