PlanSpend: getting the biggest bang for your buck
In part one of our series PlanSpend: optimize your equitable spending, and part two PlanSpend: new insights on costs and budgets, we discussed how PlanSpend provides a deeper understanding of assets, needs, finances and potential budgets — important factors that lead up to the most critical aspect of the PlanSpend solution, making the most of your capital planning budgets.
With competing infrastructure needs and no single right answer, the ability to examine multiple scenarios is an important part of capital planning. PlanSpend’s data-driven approach provides capital planners and asset managers with tailored insight to enable equitable and sustainable decisions. PlanSpend integrates information into easily understood dashboards so users can compare different capital scenarios, project priorities and project bundling to find an investment solution that best meets their needs.
Applying data analytics.
PlanSpend uses interactive web dashboards that generate tabular, graphical and map-based reports summarizing and highlighting needs, conditions and spending. With such a solution, the varied scenario benefits and drawbacks are clear to see — and can be more easily communicated to stakeholders through comprehensive storyboards and graphics that clearly show the logic of selected alternatives.
With its data analytics capabilities, PlanSpend enables users to select the level or depth of analysis that they require depending on their specific budgets and needs. Impact categories, parameters for impact types, and conditions and criteria for weighted scoring, can all be selected by the user. Our team then applies our professional experience and insights to analyze this customized information, providing logical breakdowns and scenarios for replacement and repair so clients can determine the best use of their capital funding.
AECOM’s experience, combined with the portability and flexibility of PlanSpend, has been in play with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) to help the agency optimize their limited capital budget. In 2017, the housing authority — which serves more than 340,000 residents in 162,143 apartments within 277 housing developments — had a budget of US$8 billion and US$32 billion in five-year capital needs. Using mobile tablets in the field, we assessed the conditions of NYCHA’s portfolio of over 2,400 buildings, along with their associated infrastructure and utility assets, including 3,300 elevators and 700 non-residential facilities across 2,500 acres.
PlanSpend was applied to NYCHA’s portfolio of needs a means of supporting decisions on how to most effectively use available funds. By grouping the deficiencies of existing assets by system and severity, PlanSpend created multiple project bundles with impact scores rated from 0 to 100, based on client-specified scoring using weighted priorities. For example, after reviewing the scores, NYCHA elected to bundle roof repair projects across its system — a cost-effective investment that enabled the housing authority to best apply limited funding across the broadest range of constituencies. This initial evaluation was just the beginning of our long-term planning and spending collaboration. We continue advising NYCHA, helping advance the agency’s current capital plan that was initiated early in 2022.
Into the future.
PlanSpend consolidates asset data, forecast conditions and costs to produce high-integrity asset data. This in turn optimizes long-term spending and strengthens capital planning. PlanSpend then applies a mathematical methodology to transparently communicate capital planning options and outcomes to stakeholders that take the guesswork out of asset management and capital planning.
This is just the beginning of the possibilities engendered by our digital expertise. With AECOM expanding our existing platforms and developing new digital solutions, asset owners will be able to target their spending where it will deliver better outcomes and lasting legacies.