This is a brief account of a lengthy 2014 dialogue I had with Patrick Whelan, a thoughtful architect in WA. You are now invited to join the discussion.
Patrick: In WA, a scoring model was devised and adopted for all police buildings, It scored building fabric condition and the condition of services to determine an overall condition score. The building’s suitability for purpose was then determined by comparing scores for compliance with the Building Code of Australia and for compliance with the Police Building Code (the agency’s accommodation standards) Comparing the Condition score with the Suitability score enabled a ‘works priority score’ for the station, in effect displaying a level of service offered by each station.
Penny: Whilst building condition and code compliance are important, they are important from the perspective of the building maintenance manager. To get at the idea of service perhaps we need to look at what the building user wants to get out of the building. A building may be in excellent condition and meet all code conditions, yet still fail to work efficiently for the user. It may be that the design is no longer suitable for the new work that needs to be carried out, or it may have the wrong capacity – either too much or too little. It may be in the wrong place!
Patrick: In the case of the WA Police, their Building Code articulates everything needed of a building to progress policing: Planning criteria, technical criteria, functional relationship diagrams, room data sheets, formulae for calculating room sizes and the number of ablutions facilities, guidelines for the compliant design of custodial facilities, etc. The Police, being a paramilitary organisation, have a very strong handle on what is needed to do the job. However, things change over time, and the building code changes with them.
Penny: Building codes are so efficient because, in the short term, people only need to respond, ‘on the dotted line’, as it were: they don’t have to think. However can what makes for short term efficiency lend itself to longer term ineffectiveness? What can be done to determine a code that is both efficient and effective?
For infrastructure in the Netherlands, we’ve adopted the NEN 2767-IV norm for grading condition. The problem with this is, that it originated in the building/utility sector and condition grading is done mostly visual and these conditions are interpreted as “level of function”- that’s where it often goes wrong. As Patrick states, the building code has to exist next to other functional requirements, and condition does not always correlate 1-on-1 to functionality. In my opinion, levels of service vary in time due to a lot of variables, such as condition of the physical asset, environmental context but most of all, (end) customers demands. It is here where the importance of stakeholder management occurs.
On the more instrumental side, I think a method as Value Engineering and – Analysis (sometimes seen as exponent of Systems Engineering) can help in determining the service levels.
Furthermore, I think there’s a hierarchy involved. So, next to a Product Breakdown Structure (of the asset) and the Work Breakdown Structure (of AM activities), there is a need of a “Service Level Breakdown”. This could be synonymous to a hierarchical performance management system, where on each level performance is determined by 3 variables, being the physical functional condition of the asset, the operations of the asset and the use.
I second the details Mr. Nagelhout brought up. Also, I noticed that in almost every LoS conversation, a good portion of it spent on “what exactly LoS means?”. There is a many to many relationship in the terminology which sometimes leads to participants believing they are talking about the same item, only to find out later that they were not. This is not to say that anyone was in the wrong, but that there is a need for LoS taxonomy. I suggest the top level of hierarchy to have four categories: conditional – defined by professionals (those that build/manage infrastructure), conditional – defined by the public (users), functional – defined by professionals, functional – defined by the public.
I’ve used the above categories to focus conversations of multi disciplined-teams.