The Capital Project Hiding in the Repair History
Years of recurring mechanical problems had been documented, but the full cost of replacing the system had never been established. When a renovation finally forced…
Capital Planning
“Paused” Is Not a Project Status
What an owner needs to preserve when a capital project is put on hold. After an eighteen-month pause, the restart found the project manager gone,…
What Makes a Capital Project? (And What the Forecast Can’t Tell You)
A five- or ten-year forecast identifies individual capital needs. The owner still has to decide which ones belong together. A five-year forecast placed lighting in…
The New Office Opened. Everyone Else Started Comparing.
A workplace investment at one address changes expectations everywhere else—and leaves facilities to explain the difference. When one office got a new build-out while another…
The Business Unit Had a Project. The Capital Plan Didn’t.
The request sounded simple until someone priced everything required to make it work. A request to “move a few walls” can turn out to need…
The Facilities Director Left. The Decision Process Got Exposed.
The knowledge may remain. Context and authority may no longer sit in the same place. When a facilities director leaves mid-project, the technical analysis can…
The Cost Wasn’t Eliminated. The Options Were.
Some construction budget decisions don’t save money. They decide what the next capital project has to undo. When bids came in high, leadership shrank the…
The Building Gets Transferred. The Reasoning Often Doesn’t.
Capital projects don’t just transfer buildings. They transfer the consequences of decisions—often without transferring the reasoning behind them. A General Manager inherited a building that…
Every Project Gets an Explanation. Not Every Explanation Is True.
The project is finished. Lessons-learned reviews often settle on a tidy explanation like “stakeholder alignment,” which names no decision and leads the next project to…
The Hidden Signal That Your Organization Has Outgrown a Facilities-Only Approach
The tipping point isn’t more projects. It’s when every new priority begins changing the assumptions behind projects already in the plan. When a strategic initiative,…
When a Project Finds More Than It Was Funded to Fix
Sometimes the most consequential capital decisions appear after work begins. The roof is already off. The contractor calls to report a deteriorated roof access door,…
Look Organized and Still Produce Surprises
The schedule is issued and the meetings are running. The decisions guiding the work may still have no owner. A project can look organized while…
The Hardest Part of Capital Projects Isn’t Construction
It’s deciding which projects deserve capital. That decision sits at the heart of effective capital project planning. Most people think capital projects get difficult once…
“Just Get It Built” Might Be the Most Dangerous Instruction an Owner Can Give
In capital projects, when someone says “just get it built,” alignment has usually already broken down. Every phase has a failure point when alignment is…
From Cost Center to a Savings Center: Proving the ROI of Facility Management
Facilities does not have to turn every expenditure into a saving. It does need to show leadership what the organization receives in return. Originally published…