By
Brian R. Hook
Are you in need of facilities-management services? Why not call
an architectural firm? This may seem out of the ordinary until
learning that St. Louis-based architectural-design-firm Arcturis
Inc. provides computer-aided-facilities-management services.
CAFM services consist of taking basic floor plan drawings of
buildings or facilities and attaching it to a database. This
allows for accurate tracking of space and assets by giving clients
instant access to a wide range of information and the ability
to generate timely management reports. According to Arcturis,
CAFM software allows clients to track asset depreciation and
plan for equipment and furniture replacement.
“There are not a whole lot of design firms that have this aspect
within their business,” says James Castruccio, a principal at
Arcturis who leads the technology team at the firm. “We have
it together with the architecture, because we can leverage the
other expertise within the firm and it becomes one more piece
we can offer our clients.”
Arcturis starts with an off-the-shelf software application.
Castruccio says there are a number of CAFM programs on the market.
Arcturis employs a number of programmers and developers that
then take the software and add on to it to meet the client’s
particular needs. “If it meets 65 percent of a client’s needs
out of a box, through our programming, we come up with the other
35 percent to meet their entire needs,” Castruccio says.
Arcturis, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year,
has been providing CAFM services for 12 years. It provides about
10 to 15 percent of the firm’s revenues. “We’ve grown substantially,”
Castruccio says. Arcturis had one CAFM client for the first
six years. It now has eight in St. Louis and another three outside
St. Louis. The amount of space each client has varies, from
144,000 square feet up to 26 million square feet.
About 65 percent of the clients are from St. Louis. The firm
also has clients statewide. It also serves clients remotely.
Some of the St. Louis clients have national and global offices
that are managed by the software. “They might be headquartered
here, but they have spaces throughout the country or world that
are managed,” Castruccio says.
Types of service vary. For some, Arcturis will build the system,
install it, and train the staff. Arcturis will then provide
technical support. Other times, Arcturis will build, implement
and then manage the space for the clients. “We tend to be able
to do it quicker, more efficiently, because this is what we
do every day,” Castruccio says.
CAFM is scalable to any size business. The cost to implement
a CAFM system range from $5,000 to several hundred thousand
dollars, depending on the size of the space to be managed and
the capabilities required, according to Arcturis. Training for
CAFM typically involves eight to 16 hours for a client to be
able use the software effectively and twice that amount if a
client plans to do the administration in house.
“It really fits anyone that has space to manage, whether it
is corporate, financial, medical, governmental or education.
Everyone has space to manage. The question is how do they currently
manage it? We can service just about any client,” Castruccio
says.
One of Arcturis’ clients is the Missouri Office of Administration
in Jefferson City. The division provides professional asset
management services to assist state entities meet their facility
needs. David Mosby, director of facilities management, design
and construction, says the department selected Arcturis to help
with space planning.
“When the new Administration came in we had a significant problem.
We had a lot of leases and a lot of vacant space we owned. The
challenge was to fill up as much of the office space that we
could that we owned and get out of leases,” Mosby says.
Arcturis’ CAFM system helped the department eliminate about
50 leases across the state and helped the department drive up
the occupancy rate in state office buildings, according to Mosby.
The process helped the state save $5 million in taxpayer’s money.
All of the state’s drawings were scanned into the system. The
computer system then measured rentable space. Mosby says in
years past an individual did this and it took a year to complete.
“We found a lot of errors. We found in some places that we had
more square footage than we thought. We weren’t allocating the
costs correctly,” Mosby says.
In the past every entity across the state was also charged the
same rental rate, regardless of the building or the function
of the building. Rents for office space were the same for laboratory
space and state health labs, which tend to have higher utility
rates.
“Folks in the office buildings were actually supplementing folks
in the laboratory for their rents. Now each building has its
own rental rates based on its cost,” Mosby says.
“Because we have an accurate measurement of space, we are able
to keep track and do this billing for office space on a real-time
basis, just like commerce real estate.”
Previously the state’s facilities system was running years in
arrears. Departments were being billed for two years ago. Because
of that, the state had to front over $6 million in general revenue
money to cover inefficiencies in the system. “We were able to
cut that $6 million out of the budget,” Mosby says. “We now
operate on a real-time economy. It has made us much more efficient.
We have a much better handle on our office space.”
For additional information on the information technology
cluster, please visit the St. Louis Regional Chamber &
Growth Association (RCGA) website. http://www.gotostlouis.org/x477.xml
