In August of 2009, the Board of Supervisors adopted a Real Estate Asset Management Plan (RAMP); the RAMP stated that “a real estate management strategy should be developed that integrates information to strategically assess and plan for County facilities needs over time.” Despite the adoption of the RAMP, little was done to rectify the operational ‘silos’ that existed among those divisions involved with asset management: Real Estate, Facilities Maintenance, Capital Projects, and Finance. These silos resulted in a dearth of the decision support data that is critical to asset management.  
  
On April 1, 2013, the Public Works Director approved a contract with Estrada Consulting, Inc. (Estrada). Thru this first contract (Phase I), Julian Branston, business analyst for Estrada, performed a thorough analysis of those Public Works Department workflows and systems related to asset management. The main deliverable for Phase I was a Feasibility Study Report (FSR) dated February 7, 2014, entitled “Asset Management Solutions: A Feasibility Study Report for Public Works.” The FSR indicated that rigorous data standardization was necessary as a precursor to the acquisition and deployment of any software solution. Additionally, the FSR identified the need for increased inter-divisional awareness, as well as the development of performance metrics to measure the quality of asset management.  
  
On May 6, 2014, the Public Works Director approved a second contract with Estrada (Phase II), during which Julian Branston coordinated the conversion of several ‘paper-only’ data sources into a standardized format, developed an ‘asset management data standard’ that is now used throughout the Public Works Department, and created cross-functional teams that identified high-level RAMP performance metrics. Julian Branston also determined that the current ‘program accounting’ structure of the County finance system was inadequate at capturing ‘per asset’ costs, which are a critical component of any asset management plan. An update on Phase II was presented to the Public Works Director and Deputies on May 13, 2015; the consensus was to move forward with the recommended actions and to contract with Julian Branston, now owner of Plan B Works, to work towards the RAMP objectives.  
  
Under the scope of this contract, Plan B Works (Contractor) will work with cross-functional teams on performance metrics; additionally, Contractor will work with cross-functional teams to re-engineer the current approach to capturing building costs in the County finance system. With technical assistance from Public Works’ Information Technology staff, Contractor will also assist in the creation of an asset management tool that provides decision support data to Public Works and the County Administrator’s Office. Contractor will work to develop an internal Facilities Condition Assessment (FCA) methodology that will ultimately eliminate the current need for periodic analysis by the ISES Corporation.  

Without approval from the Board of Supervisors, an Asset Management Dashboard will not be created. The result will be that insufficient and inaccurate decision support data will be provided to the asset managers in the Public Works Department.  

.