Grants: Conservation

Recreation Facility Development Program - Life Cycle Planning

Definition and Scope

Facility life cycle planning is a systematic approach to forecasting the maintenance and replacement requirements of the components of a facility over its complete life span. This is done by means of a facility audit. The process includes developing accountable strategies to provide the resources needed for repair, retrofit, and improvement projects. Life cycle planning is seen as a tool to help protect and maintain the substantial public investment in recreation facilities in Nova Scotia.

Life cycle planning is demonstrated and used primarily for major indoor facilities - arenas, pools, gymnasiums - but it is equally applicable to outdoor facilities, large and small.

Rationale

Part of the vision statement and several goals of Nova Scotia Health Promotion Commission relate to recreation facilities. These include ensuring that:

• Recreation areas and facilities are accessible to all, safe, and of high quality.
• Organizations and agencies within the sport and recreation system operate at optimal efficiency and effectiveness, consistent with their resources.
• The number and quality of areas and facilities is appropriate to provide a quality leisure experience, consistent with available community resources.

Many recreation facilities in Nova Scotia are more than 15 years old. Most of the major facilities were constructed during a relatively short period of time approximately 20 years ago. As these facilities age, there has been a continuing and growing demand on funding from all sources, including the provincial government, to repair, renovate and replace them.

Generally speaking, the maintenance of recreation facilities over their lifetime has been minimal. This has resulted in a large demand for emergency repair and unanticipated replacement. It is the opinion of Nova Scotia Health Promotion that facility managements must try to assess, plan for, and manage the major repairs, renovations, and the replacements that inevitably occur. This could lessen the operational and financial impact of crisis situations.

Nova Scotia Health Promotion, in its Recreation Facility Development document called Re Rec- creation Facilities reation - A strategy for the 90's s, has identified the need to assess existing facilities in order to measure the potential investment required to ensure they continue to function.

As fiscal restraint places a greater strain on provincial and municipal purse strings, our ability to replace aging recreation facilities becomes very uncertain. Perhaps the only way of contin continu- uing to provide the level of recreation ing services we enjoy today is to maximize the life spans of our recreational facil facili- ities. ties.

The Basics of Life Cycle Planning

Four terms can be used to describe the types of costs associated with the life cycle of a recreation facility.

• Capital development includes the expenditures associated with planning and constructing a facility.
• Maintenance aintenance comprises all of the dayto- day activities that care for the physical fabric of a facility, including minor repairs.
• Conservation deals with repairing and replacing major facility components and systems due to natural aging, faulty design, and construction and maintenance problems.
• Capital improvements apital include only those activities and expenditures that upgrade or change the use of a facility. If we compare the life cycle of a facility to the life cycle of a person, the distribution of these costs can be illustrated as follows:


The majority of Nova Scotia's recreation and sport facilities can be categorized as entering their 'adolescence' stage. Facility owners and operators can be lured into a false sense of financial security during the first 14 years of operation. However, the 'adolescence' stage shows a five-fold increase in annual expenditures for conservation and capital improvement.

If owners and operators are not prepared for an increase of this magnitude, problems with upkeep start to emerge at Year 15, which will eventually lead to facility breakdowns. Without special direction at this stage, we could find our recreation facilities reaching the end of their life cycle long before they reach the desired 'old age' stage of life.

Utilizing the identifiable stages of aging and cost requirements associated with them, an estimate was made of the future cash flow requirements for Nova Scotia's arenas. The estimate was developed by comparing the year of construction of arenas in five-year increments and the accumulated cash flow requirement resulting from that. As seen in the graph 'Arena Life Cycle Costing', the projected costs have been fairly close to the actual costs to date.

It is emphasized that, although arenas have been used in this example, the life cycle process, planning, and management is applicable to any recreation facility - in fact to any facility.



Roles and Responsibilities

The following roles are perceived by Nova Scotia Health Promotion to be appropriate for implementing a life cycle planning process.

Facility Owner

• Make a commitment to the life cycle planning process.
• Establish a base line component inventory and assessment through a facility audit.
• Review the facility audit and establish strategies to meet maintenance, conservation, and capital needs for the future.
• Review and revise the life cycle plan as appropriate.
• Communicate strategies to the manager/ operator of the facility, particularly those related to conservation and capital work.

Facility Manager /Operator

• Maintain proper records of maintenance conservation and capital
works undertaken for the facility
• Establish and maintain up=to-date inventory and assessment of all components of the facility.
• Implement strategies established by owners for all maintenance, conservation, and capital projects.
• Ensure an adequate maintenance plan is in place.

Nova Scotia Health Promotion

• Create an awareness with facility operators and owners of the long-term needs for facility conservation.
• Encourage the use of life cycle planning in all recreation facilities in Nova Scotia
• Help provide facility audits for all recreation facilities in Nova Scotia.
• To assist in the utilization of facility audits to establish life cycle plans and strategies

Methods

Nova Scotia Health Promotion will contribute to encouraging life cycle planning for recreation facilities in a number of ways. n Compile and prepare resource materials for distribution or presentation to individual facility managers/ owners and to workshop and conference sessions.

• Provide financial assistance to help facilities obtain facility audits and prepare life cycle plans.
• Provide staff consultation for individual facilities involved with the life cycle planning process at all levels.
• Identify and train resource people to provide information and education on the life cycle planning process.
• Ensure that conversation projects are eligible for capital assistance under Nova Scotia Health Promotion's Recreation Facility Development (Capital Grant) Program.