VFA Honors Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Sisters of Mercy Health System for Excellence in Facilities Capital Management and Capital Spend Management

Organizations Recognized for Innovations that Have Enhanced Productivity and Optimized Capital Funds

BOSTON, MA – October 29, 2008 – VFA, Inc., the leading provider of solutions for facilities capital planning and capital spend management, presented Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sisters of Mercy Health System with its 2008 CapStar Awards for innovation in facilities capital management and excellence in spend management respectively.

Berkeley Lab is a member of the national laboratory system supported by the U.S. Department of Energy through its Office of Science. It is managed by the University of California (UC) and is charged with conducting unclassified research across a wide range of scientific disciplines. As required by the DOE, Berkeley Lab must meet standards for the planning, programming, budgeting, operation, maintenance, and disposal of real property under its custody and control.

Berkeley Lab saw an opportunity to create a comprehensive, integrated facilities assessment, analysis, planning, work execution, and reporting system and worked with VFA to create tools to integrate, assemble and analyze data for decision-making. The innovations in use at Berkeley Lab include the early adoption of VFA’s Green Building Assessment Services, a “Mission Readiness” evaluation program, and acting as a pilot site for the DOE’s High Performance & Sustainable Buildings (HPSB) sustainability guidance development.  Berkeley Lab has been recognized by the DOE for developing a best practice integrated facilities management solution, and is now sharing its processes and insights with other organizations.

Sisters of Mercy Health System is the nation’s ninth largest Catholic health system with 20 hospitals in seven states and $3.7 billion in annual revenues. The St. Louis-based Mercy recognized the challenges in maintaining visibility into and control of capital spending, and determined the need for an overarching strategic initiative dedicated entirely to capital management. 

To improve decision-making, Mercy wanted to establish visibility into capital needs for stakeholders across all hospitals and regions within the system, and to control capital spending by ensuring optimal allocation of scarce resources.  Mercy implemented VFA.spendManager® capital spend management software to support integrated capital planning, budgeting and purchasing processes, enabling better prioritization of capital spending and forecasting of capital needs and cash requirements.

“VFA is pleased to recognize Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sisters of Mercy Health System with the 2008 CapStar Awards,” said VFA President and CEO Jerry Kokos. “As leading examples of innovative organizations that have employed best practices in facilities capital planning and capital spend management, both Berkeley Labs and Sisters of Mercy are continuously improving their capital processes in support of their important organizational missions.”

The CapStar Award honors innovative applications of software technology or business processes in facilities capital planning and capital spend management. Recipients are selected based on innovative approaches, bridge building among different functional areas and stakeholders, and tangible business benefits. The awards were presented at VFA’s fifth annual customer conference, VFA Connections 2008, in Boston.

About VFA
Headquartered in Boston, VFA, Inc. is the leading provider of end-to-end solutions for facilities capital planning and asset management. VFA solutions uniquely combine facility assessment services, Web-based software and business consulting services to enable customers to manage every stage of the capital asset lifecycle — from requirements gathering and long-term planning to capital budget creation and spend management. Over 400 organizations in corporate, education, government and healthcare markets have relied on VFA solutions to strategically manage their capital assets. VFA’s flagship software product, VFA.facility®, is currently used to manage more than two billion square feet of real estate. For more information, please call 800-693-3132 or visit http://www.vfa.com.