Editor’s note: This is the first in a three-part series detailing the state of the University’s academic buildings, which have not been evaluated since 2005.
 
Faulty pipelines, deteriorating door frames, staircases without railings.
These are a few of the items on the University’s “to-do” list of improvements, a list that has remained stagnant since 2005, slowly festering as the projects’ multi-million dollar price tag – currently $255 million – continues to grow.
A Daily Reveille investigation into the progress of updating the University’s academic buildings has revealed that although they should be routinely assessed and evaluated, it has been more than seven years since this process was carried out to its fullest extent, and many of the facilities’ bigger operating systems have needed repair since the ’80s. Additionally, the state is paying money for this largely unused and outdated data.
In 2004, Louisiana’s state office of Facility Planning and Control hired international consulting firm VFA to assess facilities and help plan capital renewal programs, which would fund those buildings. The Boston-based firm was to evaluate all state-owned buildings in Louisiana, including LSU. The firm was then supposed to routinely reassess the facilities and maintain current data.
While the firm met this expectation originally, the VFA hasn’t been back to the University or any other state-owned building since 2005.
That year, VFA’s project manager with Facility Planning and Control had a stroke, and the majority of the staff working on the project left, causing the once long-term VFA assessment to end early, according to Ken Courtade, manager of Long Range Planning with LSU’s Facility Services and then-member of the state’s office of Facility Planning and Control.
But the state still has a contract with the VFA and still funds its outdated work, according to Michael DiResto, state director of Communications and Strategic Initiatives.
The contract, which expires in June, requires the state to pay $34,200 in Fiscal Year 2011-12 alone to have the VFA house and update the report information for all state-owned buildings.
The VFA report prioritizes on-campus buildings based on how much repair they need and outlines how much it would cost to fix each issue or to bring buildings up to current standards. While the VFA annually updates the cost aspects of the report based on regionalized price increases, they have not updated the building assessments since 2005, Courtade said.
The VFA report states the average cost to fix all academic buildings on campus is about 24 percent of the total cost of the buildings, or more than $255 million. This does not include costs for Residential Halls and Auxiliary Services.
“Based upon the VFA assessment, LSU has a current outstanding deferred maintenance of $255 million,” Courtade said. “But that does not include any roofs, any roads, sidewalks, sewer systems, water, anything that’s in the ground or planning and contingencies, which is about 10 percent. So that’s another $212 million on top of that. So, we’re almost at $500 million of things that need to be repaired.”
Jim Streeter, a consultant with the VFA who handles the state of Louisiana’s contract, refused to compare the state’s average cost of fixing academic buildings on campus with that of other facilities the company has assessed in the past.
He said Louisiana goes above the APPA standards by including not only things that are past due or that need to be fixed, but also what needs to be repaired in the future. APPA is an organization that provides facility managers with information about handling their buildings.
“If you took that [cost of fixing academic buildings at LSU] and included it on the APPA scale, it’d be in a fair to poor state, but that’s not the case,” Streeter said.
Courtade said the APPA standard in 1997 was 7.5 percent, but a current standard is not listed.
“There’s been a lot of discussion over the years of what’s an acceptable number,” Courtade said. “Is it 10 percent? Is it 15 percent? Is it 20 percent? From what I understand, the average nationwide is about 15 percent. If we could get ours down to 15 percent, we’re talking about a considerable amount of improvements.”
But at nearly 24 percent, the University has a long way to go. There’s also no way of determining how accurate the University’s cost of academic building repairs are since the last building assessment occurred seven years ago.
The information hasn’t been fully updated by University officials because the VFA was supposed to control the editing process so users couldn’t skew the data.
As a result, Courtade said there are buildings on the list that have already been repaired, and other items that are in dire need of improvement but aren’t included on the list. Furthermore, he said state funding for maintenance is tied to a statewide conditions assessment.
According to DiResto, the state has done a case-by-case assessment of buildings that have needed repair since the original audit.
“Since major repairs’ capital outlay funding is linked to deficiencies identified in the assessment, we have, in fact, done case-by-case assessments and updated the database where a need has developed since the original assessment so that ‘major repairs’ funding could be used to address the situation,” DiResto wrote in an e-mail.
Courtade said the state recently replaced an air handler in Hill Memorial Library that wasn’t on the VFA report, but that’s the first instance he’s observed since he’s been at the University.
House Bill 2, which allocates capital outlay funds, states that major repairs for state buildings are based on condition assessments and infrastructure, planning and construction. The bill gives a total of $116 million for repairs on all state-owned buildings in fiscal year 2012-13.
Last year, the University received none of this money, according to Courtade. It’s uncertain if this year will be any different.
Courtade said there was an additional $20 million added to this year’s budget for major repairs, but the University won’t know if it will receive any of this until it is approved in October.
It normally takes years for universities to receive the entirety of their capital outlay funds, as they usually receive them in small increments on a yearly basis.
“The way it’s set up now, and it states in the bill, that it has to be in this list,” Courtade said, talking about the VFA report. “So, it’s a double-edged sword. The intent was, ‘OK, we’re going to make sure people just aren’t crying Chicken Little – you know, the sky is falling, we have something to go on.’ But at the same time, it hasn’t been updated.”
 
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Contact Kevin Thibodeaux at [email protected]