Innovating Building Inspections with Property Management
By Courtney Forehand, Media & Marketing Intern
August 23, 2019
Hope Wright, a Project Manager who works in Property Management at headquarters, recently implemented an innovation for inspecting buildings. She and her team of interns, Zane Jacobson (a Pisces, Colorado Native, and a Sophomore at the University of Illinois in Chicago) and Cameron Petitt (also a Colorado Native and a Sophomore with the University of Denver), have been using this new process over the summer. They were tasked to complete all building inspections for the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). Jacobson heads North while Petitt travels South. Every other Friday Jacobson and Petitt meet (whether virtually or, on rare occasions, face-to-face) to draft their game plan for the next two weeks where every minute of their day is scheduled. Jacobson and Petitt visit each CDOT location, collect data relating to CDOT buildings, and enter the information into a geographic information system (GIS) to store it.
Hope Wright and her two interns, Zane Jacobson and Cameron Petitt
The Property Management team’s app, still in the developmental phase, works based on a grading system. The team uses a scale of one to five and answers questions relating to leaks in the roof, the heating and cooling systems, foundation issues, and many more. The buildings will receive an alphabetical grade and “D” and “F” graded buildings are evaluated for replacement.
Wright stated, “We are hoping it drives better decision making for future projects and give us the opportunity to consolidate projects.” For example, now that our buildings are in GIS, we can use maintenance data that is also in GIS such as patrol routes to better align future building locations with routes. We can use the same data to consolidate patrols into one new location that is adjacent to two or more patrols, for cost savings. In previous years, the building inspection was manned by numerous individuals. One problem, Wright admitted, was sending maintenance people to each location with a “paper scorecard”. These individuals would then grade each building on paper. After that was completed, they would need to enter the data into SAP. This process was long and arduous. Not to mention vulnerable to errors.
Interns Zane Jacobson and Cameron Petitt working together
For Wright and her team of interns, eliminating the possibility of erroneous data was one of the biggest concerns they tackled and one of the biggest pushes behind implementing the new app. Another issue that needed to be addressed was that of inspectors grading subjectively instead of objectively. Wright stated, “There were instances of subjectivity with grading criteria on certain buildings so I thought, “Why not hire two interns. They are completely unbiased; they do not have an attachment to the building or a stake in the outcome of the inspection.”
One of the biggest unexpected benefits from implementing this new process was that our inspectors found 35 buildings we did not know existed. This provides CDOT a better understanding of the building inventory. Since CDOT is self-insured, buildings without the proper documentation, like building numbers, would be lost if they were damaged during a natural disaster or an accident. This is another great example of how using interns helped to improve and add value to the organization! This project has saved countless hours, resulted in better and objective data and is another innovative Lean Everyday Idea. Our hats go off to this team. Great work, Team CDOT!