Challenges Facing Higher Education

For more than 30 years, I have worked with Colleges and Universities across the country to improve their Facilities Management (FM) operation. In addition, my team at R Ledbetter & Associates (RL&A) has over 200 years of combined experience in Higher Education FM. While we have an extensive resume, times are changing in Higher Ed. Business as usual is not a viable option. The last few years have been a period of rapid change in the industry and have also presented many new challenges. Following are the top trends and issues from our perspective:

• Increased Institutional costs combined with public scrutiny and pushback regarding tuition increases and under employment of graduates in many cases
• Competition (On – line, vocational, certificate programs etc)
• Aging workforce / turnover combined with a shortage of qualified replacement candidates
• Legacy life cycle and deferred maintenance issues
• Inefficient use of space and energy
• Lack of formalized strategic plans and programs for FM
• Inadequate data for benchmarking and to make data driven decisions regarding budgets, staffing and programs

R Ledbetter & Associates (RL&A) is a strategic consultancy firm specializing in Higher Education Facilities Management (FM). RL&A has the resources and expertise needed to uncover opportunities for improvement through a variety of processes, including operational assessments, organizational reviews, facility condition assessments, and energy studies. We create improvement plans, identify resource requirements, and assist your team to formalize processes and prodecures. We can identiify potential outsourcing opporutunities, assisting with the RFP and transistion process. We can also help you with your long-term capital and budgetary planning by indentifying strategic initiatives for the future - all so you can increase your customer satisfaction, protect your assets, and reduce your risks and costs.

We can help you navigate a course through these trying times and position your FM organization for success. Let’s start a conversation Contact me at Randy@rledbetter.com.