US Department of Veterans Affairs New England Region (VISN 1) operates 11 medical centers comprising about 9 million square feet of buildings. The VA decided to develop a network wide IWMS that would provide an integrated planning capability, improve the execution of the business processes at the medical centers, and provide a consolidated repository of all facility drawings, documents, and data to facilitate planning and operations.
Each facility provides a periodic report to headquarters on the utilization of each building it manages, including the square footages and specific functions of each space. This information database is aggregated from a large number of spaces that frequently change due to inevitable movement of personnel and functions.
VLogic IWMS system has been in operation at VISN 1 for the past 20 years. This system has significantly improved how the business processes related to facilities and building management are conducted. Before the implementation of this system, facility planners and operations managers had to search piles of paper to locate an engineering document only to find that the information was out of date. Now they are able to retrieve accurate, up-to-date facility condition information from their desktops to support a broad set of management and planning requirements.
IWMS space assignment and tracking application is used to allocate operating costs among divisions, which enhances accountability and cost tracking. Facilities related costs are the most significant next to costs for wages and drugs. The system has helped the government to identify operational inefficiencies and identify sustainment requirements translating into significant dollar savings.