Examples

Archival Record Stores

Many organizations find it necessary to or are required to retain records of their activities and correspondence for up to ten years and longer.

These archival record stores often form part of the commercial buildings they occupy and in many cases they are located in head office, which is invariably the most costly facility. With their ever-expanding space needs, archival storages represent a significant business cost through their operation and their unit cost of space, which is more freely recognized under cost accrual accounting.

The primary treatment option has been to shift these facilities to cheaper accommodation. In most cases this meant that the facilities were transferred to suburban or country locations, however the saving in cost was offset by a considerable increase in the transfer cost of information recovery and the inconvenience of a slower response time.

Apart from accommodation costs, the increased numbers of records and complexity of information needs has meant that recovery costs have risen significantly, together with the fact that large manual filing systems tend to have a very slow response time.

Significant advances in imaging and communication technology has meant that these problems can be addressed through:

• Cost effective image capture using simple scanning techniques
• The continued reduction in the cost of electronic storage facilities
• The improved communication systems through Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) etc.

Office imaging systems now offer us the ability to create document files on CD Rom systems that can be accessed to different security levels by many staff without the need for large record stores and more and more filing and recovery staff.

School Facilities

School facilities are difficult assets to manage effectively. Subjected to the vagaries of changing population trends they must deal with significant changes in demand and therefore utilization levels.

Apart from higher education facilities, it is most common for school buildings and other facilities to have utilization from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm five days a week and in many cases these facilities then lay dormant for the balance of the time.

In South Australia the authorities have been trying to develop strategies that will guarantee greater utilization of these facilities and accommodate changes through the way in which the school facilities are built.

School facilities have been built as normal teaching units while community facilities such as ovals, change rooms, swimming pools, gymnasiums, basketball stadiums, and halls are being constructed so as to be available as a community facility till late at night and on weekends. Schools are being encouraged to develop other uses and arrangements with other community groups to ensure that this utilization takes place.

To facilitate the changing utilization for schools on the metropolitan fringe, the South Australia Education Department are planning to experiment with using normal dwellings as class rooms and other parts of schools facilities, linked by covered ways.

By constructing schools on a court as part of a normal residential development the Education Department is able to build additional school rooms (dwellings) as the population and demand increases and reduce the school back by selling off these dwellings (class rooms) as part of a normal subdivision procedure. The only permanent school facilities are the main administration areas etc. located at the head of the court usually backing onto a parkland reserve that includes ovals and other community sporting facilities that are shared by the school and the local municipality.

An alternative to this is the use of portable classrooms on some of these normal residential allotments in the court or cul-de-sac development. When the portables are no longer required the lot is then sold as part of a residential zone development.

Ford Plant - San Jose, USA

One of Ford's largest manufacturing facilities in the USA was located in the high growth Silicon Valley area of southern San Francisco. The plant was now considered old by automotive manufacturing standards and required considerable upgrade to a more modern robotic-assisted assembly line. Also the facility was now located within a large residential sprawl and zoning issues had become a consideration.

The plant represented a considerable financial investment and the disposal value of the property was considered to be very low because of the high cost of removing the existing facility.

With the help of an innovative developer, the company converted the manufacturing facility into a large regional shopping complex, making use of the open building plan and readily available services that ran throughout the car plant. The car stockyards were converted into car parks and all miscellaneous facilities and unwanted structures were removed.

By deriving a reasonable return on their original capital investment without incurring the high cost of disposal, the company were able to fund these benefits into the upgrading of a more suitable facility.