FACILITIES MANAGEMENT WHITE PAPERS

Missouri Saving Millions In Real Estate and Energy Costs with ARCHIBUS Software

The Show Me State Shows Taxpayers It Can Reduce Overhead Without Compromising Service

ARCHIBUS, Inc.

The State of Missouri may be located in the middle of the continental United States but it is clearly on the leading edge of Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) software implementation among state governments.

With approximately 30 million square feet of owned and leased properties to oversee, Missouri's former Director of Facilities Management Design and Construction and now private sector consultant, David Mosby, had the opportunity to make significant changes to the state's outmoded real estate and facilities management applications to optimize asset management.

A review of potential vendor offerings led him to the breadth and depth of ARCHIBUS functionality that was needed to modernize the facilities management software portfolio of the country's 17th largest state. And save it millions of dollars annually in reduced real estate and other costs.

From a Pinto to a Corvette

"I knew that what we had been using in CAFM technology was a Pinto versus having a Corvette with ARCHIBUS," says Mosby, who has implemented Space Management, Real Property & Lease, and Building Operations applications.

Once these applications were installed, Mosby had all of the state's office buildings polylined and the information centralized in ARCHIBUS. The task had been performed by one staff architect, whose sole job was to track who had how much space and assign a rental value to it.

"With everything polylined, we then were able to measure and assign space allocations against a standard that was finally developed—we had never been able to do that before," reports Missouri's facilities czar, who was able to eliminate the space management architect position as a result of the new system. Mosby also turned his attention to improving the often complex matter of government billing practices and accountability.

$6.5 Million Restored to General Revenues

Each department, he points out, can have one funding source or up to 40 or 50 sources that may include federal funds, fees, and other fund sources against which space expenses are applied.

To make tracking expenses and related funding even more challenging, Missouri had used a blended rate system of space costing. All state-owned buildings had one rental rate that didn't reflect what might be higher constant expenses for some types of buildings. Lab space in the Department of Agriculture, for example, might have high HVAC and other utility costs of $6 or $7 a square foot that would ultimately be subsidized by comparable rents charged to less energy-intensive offices. As a result, a true cost for accounting purposes wasn't available to auditors. Achieving a blended rate system that worked required the state to set aside $6.5 million from general revenues to cover upfront space costs until billing was sorted out and Federal and other reimbursement funds were collected.

"It was a nightmare for the budget people," remembers Mosby. "The easy part was figuring out the square footage. The hard part was determining what part of the expense to assign to which funding source. The new Real Property & Lease Management system gives us a near-real time capability to keep track of expenses and related funding sources on a monthly basis. Now we don't have to take that $6.5 million out of general revenues anymore and it can be allocated to something else. That's a very significant change for us in real, no-kidding dollars."

Space Consolidation Saves $3 Million

With Missouri state facilities evenly split between leased and owned properties, reducing the amount of leased space was made easier by ARCHIBUS real-time capabilities in updating and accessing space allocation and occupancy information. ARCHIBUS enabled the consolidation of space during the system's first budget cycle. That allowed Missouri to cancel approximately 50 leases representing a reduction of 220,000 square feet and resulting in savings of $3 Million.

Still more savings and efficiencies are expected from the roll-out throughout the state of the ARCHIBUS Building Operations application and such advances as the use of wireless BlackBerry devices to distribute and close work orders. The reduction in paper processing and improvement in maintenance practices will make preventive maintenance and other cost-reduction activities easier and more effective, Mosby points out.

Implementing GIS

Similarly, a facilities management GIS system is being created using ARCHIBUS as a backbone that ties into a portal, links with Google Maps, and integrates with the state's centralized IT systems to support a number of other initiatives. One goal, Mosby reports, is to be able to access comprehensive information on a building using ARCHIBUS, linked with corresponding photos generated in Google Maps^TM, to call up occupancy, work order status and other building information.

Also tied into the state accounting system is the start of an electronic bill delivery initiative for the state's utility providers that is linked with ARCHIBUS to reduce paper handling and improve auditing. In the past, it took an accountant 20 minutes to input and review a utility bill. With the electronic bill delivery, it now takes only 5 minutes.

"All of these implementations are part and parcel of a statewide effort to get all this facility information integrated and centralized on the ARCHIBUS backbone," notes Mosby. "It's a wonderful platform to have so we can finally fit all these pieces of FM together. Now we have at our fingertips an accurate view of what the world looks like today. We never had that before."

About ARCHIBUS

ARCHIBUS is a leading global provider of real estate, infrastructure and facilities management software, with expenditures for ARCHIBUS-related products and services exceeding $1.7 Billion (USD). With ARCHIBUS, organizations of all sizes and their outsourcing partners can use a single, comprehensive, integrated solution to make informed strategic decisions that optimize return-on-investment, lower asset lifecycle costs, and increase enterprise-wide productivity and profitability.

More than 4,000,000 ARCHIBUS users collectively manage over 5,000,000 properties, with organizations reporting facilities-related cost savings as high as 34%. With over 1,600 ARCHIBUS Business Partners, local and regional support worldwide is available in over 130 countries and in over two dozen languages. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, ARCHIBUS, Inc. has pioneered real estate, infrastructure and facilities management software technologies since 1982—when it developed one of the world’s first integrated CAFM (computer-aided facilities management) systems. For more information, visit www.archibus.com.