Facilities Management maintains Dickinson’s buildings and grounds to protect and preserve assets, and to provide for the following:

With 120 buildings, more than 1.75 million square feet of space and over 175 acres of land -- allocating available funds towards these maintenance efforts represents an annual budgeting challenge.

In short, Dickinson’s annual allocation towards cycle maintenance is unable to keep pace with the needs and requests associated with cycle maintenance, deferred maintenance, and new construction.   With a deferred maintenance backlog surpassing $20 million dollars and annual cycle maintenance requirements that surpass $2 million dollars at a minimum, the College is faced with a difficult project selection process each year.

There are many factors that are taken into account as repair and renovation requests are considered.  In an effort to ‘de-mystify’ the selection and scheduling process, these factors are identified below.  The selection process adheres to the following principles and guidelines:

Safety and Security:  Projects that effect the safety and security of the community are given the highest priority.

Code Compliance:  Projects that are required in order to meet local or state code requirements are given the highest priority.

DeferredMaintenance and Predicted Failure:  If structural or mechanical systems, fixtures or equipment are imminently failing, then replacement or renovation projects to avoid the failure are given the highest priority.

Cycle Maintenance and Preventative Maintenance:  With the goal of preserving College assets and to avoid deferred maintenance accrual, cycle maintenance projects receive a high priority each year.  These projects consume a large portion of available funds.  These projects include roofing repairs, sidewalk repairs, painting and carpeting.

Program Modernization:  Projects that are required for academic and administrative programs to remain competitive and viable receive the highest priority possible. 

Strategic Priority:  Projects that are directly related to strategic objectives for the institution receive the highest priority possible.

Efficiency:  If a project can be accomplished that will have a short payback in terms of savings vs. project cost – then these projects are given a high priority – because they should ultimately pay for themselves.

Gifts and Grants:   The development office works with V.P. For Campus Operations Nick Stamos and Facilities Management to identify projects that have the potential to receive funding from donors or from other non-operating fund sources such as grants. When projects are identified to have the high potential to receive outside funding, operating resources are generally channeled in other directions.  Consequently, the ‘gifts and grants’ factor is important when prioritizing and scheduling project requests which fall into this category, giving these types of requests a lower priority in terms of completion with annual operating funds. 

Project Request Process:

Facilities Management conducts meetings each year with department heads to obtain project requests.  These meetings are not mandatory, but are encouraged by Facilities Management.  Project requests can also be made at any time during the year by requesting a meeting or simply sending in an email or phoning in the request.

Requests are considered, prioritized, and ultimately scheduled into one of the next three fiscal years – or into the “beyond” category - simply meaning that the schedule is uncertain and that it does not appear to be possible to entertain the project request within the next three fiscal years.

Starting in the spring of 2006, the project list will be posted on the Facilities Management web page, at www.dickinson.edu/departments/facilities/projectlist.html

Questions and concerns relating to the project request process or the status/schedule of a request are always welcome, and should be made to Ken Shultes, Associate VP for Campus Operations.

Dickinson College, PO Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013