The University has a backlog of deferred maintenance projects totaling $220 million — an amount likely to balloon even higher with the impending budget cuts for next year.The $220 million total only includes deferred maintenance for academic buildings, the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, the Paul M. Hebert Law Center and the LSU Laboratory School. Buildings that generate their own revenue like the residence halls, Tiger Stadium and the Student Union have separate deferred maintenance lists.  But add in the repair costs of streets, sidewalks, underground utilities and roofs, and the total cost jumps to $307 million, according to Kenneth Courtade, Office of Facility Services physical plant operation manager.  Because of inflation, aging and carried-over projects, the total cost of deferred maintenance has risen steadily every year — reaching its current $220 million total.”Every year you have aging in buildings,” Courtade said. “As we repair some problems, others get worse, and some new ones arise.”Funding for deferred maintenance is generally lower than the total needed to prevent the total cost from rising every year — a trend the budget cuts are likely to exacerbate. Budget cuts in general, Courtade said, affect deferred maintenance because cuts mean less money will be available for operation and maintenance of facilities, meaning more maintenance gets deferred. Chancellor Michael Martin said while deferred maintenance is a big problem, there has been “just enough to distract us from a full-court press” on deferred maintenance in the past.  Funding for deferred maintenance projects for all state-owned buildings is appropriated every fiscal year by the Legislature in House Bill 2, and the funds marked for higher education are distributed to universities across the state by the Louisiana Board of Regents. Funds for deferred maintenance for 2009 won’t be appropriated until the end of the upcoming Legislative session in June. Martin said he was taking the local legislative delegation around campus today to show them “some of the long-term” deferred maintenance.  It’s critical, Martin said, the Legislature understands how large a problem deferred maintenance is so they appropriate enough money to begin taking chunks of it out — otherwise, the Legislature can hold the University back.”It’s going to get worse,” Martin said.    Courtade said the top priorities when allocating money for maintenance projects on campus are ensuring the safety and compliance of the buildings — the last is aesthetics.   “We develop a list and work through it until we run out of money,” Courtade said. And despite the large price tag and impending budget cuts, Courtade said the University as a whole will continue to operate in the future. “As in the past during tough economic times,” Courtade said, “deferred maintenance funds generally get prioritized for emergencies, mission critical repairs, life safety/building code repairs and general repairs to keep the University operational.” There are 40 individual maintenance projects, totaling more than $2 million, in Lockett Hall alone, according to a building assessment done by Vanderweil Facility Advisors Inc., a consulting firm hired by the state to conduct state-wide building assessments. Deferred maintenance projects range from worn restroom fixture valves to non-compliant access ladders, and VFA building assessments prioritize the projects as “currently critical,” “potentially critical,” “not yet critical,” “recommended” and “does not meet current codes.”  Courtade said funds are concentrated on projects that are “currently critical,” “potentially critical” and “does not meet current codes.” In Lockett Hall there are 21 such projects with a total repair cost of $865,648, according to the assessment. “Not yet critical” and “recommended” projects will generally take more than five years to begin repairing, Courtade said — at which time, because of aging, those projects may have a higher priority anyway.  Other buildings have more projects, higher repair costs and can take as long as 20 years to fully repair, Courtade said. Atkinson Hall has a facility condition index of 64 percent, according to the VFA building assessment — meaning the deferred maintenance cost of the facility equals 64 percent of the current replacement value of the entire facility. A “fair to good facility” has an FCI rating of less than 15 percent, according to the International Facility Management Association, an association for professional facility managers. Courtade said some historic state-owned facilities like Atkinson Hall and the French House accumulate maintenance problems and become particularly expensive to fully repair. The average FCI for all academic buildings on the University’s main campus and the Vet School is 20.2 percent — markedly higher than the average public research university FCI of 7.5 percent, according to the VFA assessment. Courtade said the Office of Facility Services received $14 million last year and appropriated that money to 57 projects campus-wide.   “The current level of deferred maintenance represents a daunting challenge to the University,” Courtade said. “But it is not one LSU faces alone. All state-owned facilities face the same problem with deferred maintenance totaling an estimated $1 billion state-wide.” Only with “all the money in the world,” Courtade said, would the Office of Facility Services be able to fully repair all the deferred maintenance on campus. Martin said right now the University is trying to “hang on.”  —-Contact Nate Monroe at [email protected]