A facilities condition assessment survey produces a mountain of information on each structure surveyed. The following sections explain how to use the data.

INFRA and Record Keeping

The information that is gathered during facility condition surveys should be added to the official records for each structure. Chapter 60 of the Forest Service Handbook 7309.11 (https://fs.usda.gov/wps/myportal/fsintranet/!ut/p/c5/) identifies the required facility records. This information also is used to complete INFRA facilities maintenance data inputs, to identify and set priorities for needed maintenance work, to develop work plans, and to allocate sparse facility maintenance funds to the highest priority problems.

Maintaining good facility records is key to effective long-term management and also is required by the Forest Service Handbook. Good records give ever-changing personnel the information needed to keep Forest Service facilities well maintained and to manage risks.

INFRA (http://pcs27.f16.r6.fs.fed.us/infra) is a particularly important information storage tool. Maintaining and updating the INFRA database gives region, station, and headquarters offices ready access to the information they need to make management and budgetary decisions and to provide evidence of work accomplishments. With INFRA's continually improving report functions, it also can be used for forest- and district-level work planning, budgeting, and tracking work accomplishments. Facilities engineers who are not familiar with INFRA and its capabilities should contact their unit's INFRA coordinator to learn about training opportunities.

Planning and Budgeting

The Forest Service Handbook requires facilities engineers to prevent major unplanned facilities repairs, reconditioning, or replacement by developing and implementing a preventive maintenance program. Good records are needed for such a program. The facilities engineer needs to know the maintenance that is to be performed annually, when buildings are due to be repainted or reroofed, the expected life of materials, and so on. Commercial computer programs such as Facilities Tracker and Mpulse (see Maintenance Management Software in appendix A) can help a facilities engineer create a preventive maintenance plan. The Northern Region's Building Maintenance Data Entry spreadsheet's annual maintenance section (http://fsweb.wo.fs.fed.us/eng/programs/facilities/r01forms.htm) provides some information on expected replacement cycles. Future plans for INFRA include a maintenance management feature.

Facilities budgeting procedures are not uniform. Some forests distribute funds to each district based on a formula accounting for a building's square footage and its age. Each district then uses the findings of the facilities condition survey as a basis for determining how maintenance funds will be spent. Other forests set priorities for projects forestwide and distribute funding to the districts for the highest priority projects. The authors have observed that units that set priorities and fund projects forestwide generally tend to have a lower backlog of deferred maintenance projects. One way to organize and display overall forest maintenance funding priorities is to use a spreadsheet similar to Facilities Maintenance Projects (http://fsweb.wo.fs.fed.us/eng/programs/facilities/documents/convey04.xls). A drawback of this sort of spreadsheet is that projects have to be copied into it from other sources.

Forest Service facilities engineers have a challenging job. The Forest Service's diverse and often unique structures, the continual scarcity of maintenance funds, and an aging infrastructure add complexity to the job. Timely condition surveys, good record keeping, and effective use of tools can help facilities engineers meet the challenge. Inspecting a House, the "What the Books Don't Tell You" section of this guide, and a good condition survey checklist can help inexperienced facilities engineers perform comprehensive facilities condition assessment surveys. The surveys will help ensure that appropriate maintenance is performed on Forest Service structures (figure 11) so that they meet the needs of visitors and the staffs who occupy them throughout their full service life.

Figure 11—This fire engine garage is the latest addition to the Oak Grove
Work Center on the Cleveland National Forest's Palomar Ranger
District (Pacific Southwest Region).