Establishing Comparative Measures for
Your Real Property Portfolio

Comparing key metrics about the condition, costs, and replacement values of an organization’s facilities and building systems provides valuable insights for capital planning. However, placing these data points within a larger context requires information about how an organization's facilities compare to those of others like them, and to best-in-class facilities overall.

Using aggregate data from hundreds of clients in a wide range of industries, VFA helps individual organizations understand how their facilities compare to their peer group within their market and across sectors. More importantly, we help them interpret the numbers, understanding what comparative differences mean for their portfolio and developing strategies for targeting improvements.

VFA’s Facilities Benchmarking Service helps an organization to:

• Understand how its facilities compare to others
• Determine the reason for differences
• Validate that planned investments are appropriately targeted
• Justify requests for funding based on market-wide benchmarks
• Track progress toward goals over time

Benchmarking begins by determining performance measures most critical for an organization in its capital decision making process. Next, we define a peer group that will form the basis for comparing facility metrics, based on such parameters as market, region, asset use and type, and building system. Peer group data is drawn from VFA’s benchmarking database, which includes information about over 41,000 facilities, encompassing more than one billion square feet.

Based on aggregate data from this peer group, VFA consultants benchmark the organization’s portfolio based on a set of comparative metrics such as:

• Facility condition index (FCI)
• Requirement cost per square foot
• Replacement value per square foot
• Asset renewal per square foot
• System condition index
• Percent of systems consumed

VFA delivers a detailed report of benchmark findings, including analysis, interpretation, and recommendations. To ensure the organization derives the greatest value from the benchmark data, VFA conducts in-depth workshops to both present findings and provide insights into their implications for the organization’s facility portfolio and long-term capital strategy.