R&R Plan Executive Summary

Repair & Rehabilitation Matching Funds Program FY13 Round 3 Guidelines Application Form PDF or Excel

Purdue University has had a Repair and Rehabilitation Program (R&R) for more than 30 years. The program is part of Purdue's overall Enterprise Risk Management Program and is focused on Purdue's academic and administrative facilities and the campus infrastructure that supports these facilities. The academic and administrative buildings and infrastructure on the West Lafayette Campus have a current replacement value estimated at $4.370 billion (see exhibit 1). Physical and Capital Planning along with staff from Physical Facilities estimates that the academic and administrative facilities and infrastructure have a deferred R&R backlog of just over $428 million.

Exhibit 1

 

The R&R Program for the West Lafayette Campus has evolved over the years to become a comprehensive, data driven program. In January 2005 the Physical Facilities department implemented an inspection program that included Senior Level Engineers, Architects and other highly experienced staff. This group identified as R&R Component Champions is charged with the physical inspection, of all academic and administrative facilities, documenting deficiencies as defined by the program. The inspection documents, prepared by the component champions, include the type of deficiency, a project scope to correct the deficiency and an estimate for the total cost of the project. In many cases Component Champions use photos to assist in the documentation, which also assists when conducting future inspections. Maintained in the R&R master database, this information is used by the program, by campus planning staff, reports for University administration and by the State of Indiana as required. Additionally, it's through these inspections that the R&R Program is able to document and report the annual growth of deferred R&R, which over the last 3 years has averaged $45 million.

In January 2007, the R&R Program incorporated the use of the APPA 5 Levels of Maintenance criteria. This incorporation helped to redefine projects, buildings and infrastructure components, and how the program would react to any level of funding made available for the R&R Program.

This flexibility is extremely important, especially with the inconsistency in the level of State R&R funding in recent years. Another benefit to the program is having the ability to match each project to the level targeted for each facility. This assists in improved decision making related to the use of R&R funds ensuring that only the necessary funds are spent to maintain a facility at their targeted level.

The recent creation of the Capital Coordinating Committee (C3) has added a mechanism to the R&R program to gather input from Academic Departments on a biennial basis. Up to this time, the focus was on the repair and rehabilitation from a strictly physical or obsolescence perspective. In some cases, only after a project was identified and created did an interaction with the department start. Through the C3 meetings, each Department is able to provide their ten year master plan, the R&R Program is provided with the additional information to help make improved decisions on the project's scope that impact their space.

There are two main concerns of the R&R program including:

It was recommended in a study funded through the joint efforts of SCUP, NACUBO, APPA, and Coopers and Lybrand titled Financial Planning Guidelines for Facility Renewal and Adaption that the annual funding level for the R&R Program should be 1.5% – 3% of the replacement value. If that were to be followed at Purdue's West Lafayette campus (based on a CRV of $3.923 billion) the investment for R&R would have to be between $58 million and $117 million annually. This is both not practical, nor is it achievable. A more practical approach is through a balance capital model. A balanced capital model for R&R funding would include; a funding level equal to the annual growth in the R&R backlog, which is approximately $45 million that includes: a replacement of existing aging facilities (removes their backlog); large renovation projects of the existing aging spaces through grants, gift funds and bonding authority; and creating a mechanism where gift funded projects would be required to endow funds for future R&R repairs. This approach would:

The current funding level for R&R includes University recurring sources of $13.9m ($4.8 million to service debt) annually and is supplemented through the State R&R funding formula, department funds, Physical Facilities operations and maintenance funds, special gifts and grant funds.

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For more information about R&R projects, please contact Keith Moore, R&R Group Manager, at 49-49501 or kem@purdue.edu.