The U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) is all about pursuing the thrill of victory. Yet, over time, it realized that its old facilities management system was more often imposing the agony of defeat on the organization’s effort to more cost-effectively
manage its three U.S. training centers.
In addition to not being user-friendly and web enabled, the old USOC system was also plagued by inaccurate, fragmented data, a lack of reporting functionality, and — adding technology insult to sports facility injury — an IT department that could
no longer support the old legacy system, says the USOC’s Jennifer Bearce.
That combination of factors undermined the non-profit organization’s ability to control costs and conditions at its Olympic Training Centers in Lake Placid, New York, Chula Vista, California, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. Those centers
comprise a total of 120 acres and 850,000 square feet of training sites, visitor centers, housing, dining, and office space.
To create a system that finally centralizes accurate facilities and operational data, as well as making it accessible online for work order, preventive maintenance, space and asset management processes, the USOC teamed with Archibus Business Partner BRG to create a winning technology platform that was a platonic — if not Olympic — ideal.
Implementation Roadmap: Critical Platform and Process Choices
With an implementation roadmap of this scope, notes Bearce, one of the first things needed was executive/management-level buy-in.
“Given that the USOC is a high-prole, quasigovernment agency, it’s helpful to get some support from that level, especially when we thought the system should be hosted externally because of the competing demands on our IT department’s resources,” Bearce reports. “So we did the RFP and converted from that former
system to Archibus after determining that this was the best system for our needs.”
The two-part implementation initially focused on space management and required polyline data to be imported from the old system into Archibus, attaching space metadata to it, and updating space categories.
The second phase concentrated on building operations processes, such as setting up
preventive maintenance procedures and schedules. Staff and external end-users were trained on the system, and appropriate Service Level Agreements were established for internal customers and outside service contractors.
“One thing we did to make work orders easier to manage,” Bearce explains, “was to create a single screen for work orders so that supervisors and crafts people had a one-stop-shop for viewing work order assignments, status and floor plans with maintenance locations.”
Facilities Facts
Acres
Square Feet
Training Centers
Archibus Applications
- Space Management
- Lease Administration
- Enterprise Move Management
- On Demand Work
- Preventive Maintenance
Top Benefits Gained
- User-friendly system for space and work management processes
- Simplified reporting
- Improved support of organization’s financial and operations goals through greater automation and self-service options
Streamlined Reporting Improves Service Delivery
Sophisticated reporting capabilities in Archibus now allow the USOC to do the detailed work order tracking they could not do before, to more effectively allocate craftsperson resources where and when they are needed. With the new facilities management platform, managers can compare their closed versus open work orders with ease and isolate reports by training center site.
“One of the requirements was that the New York, Colorado, and California training centers needed to have Archibus front ends that are segregated so that each site has access only to its own information. But all of the sites are using the same Archibus back end, a feat made possible by using a standard VPA restriction,” says Bearce.
“A follow-up requirement was the creation of a subset of departments within those sites, which only required a further VPA restriction so that California doesn’t have to look at Colorado data and Colorado doesn’t view information from the New York training center.”
Meeting User and Organizational Goals
The USOC’s Archibus implementation will continue to change and grow with their evolving needs, but there is no question that the Olympic Committee’s Facilities Management Division, like the games themselves, has raised the performance bar while allowing the organization to work smarter, Bearce points out.
Facility technicians, for example, finally have a user friendly system for space and work management processes. Supervisors like the simplified reporting. And many of the staff at the USOC’s three training sites are getting their first experience with an FM system that supports the organization’s financial and operational goals with more automated, self-serve work order and maintenance processes.