2011-01-AU Limited Scope Performance Audit of the Department of Parks and Recreation’s Facilities Asset Management

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Chapter 3: OPERATIONS budgeting processes are reactionary rather than proactive, and generally only address maintenance and repair issues once they have become obvious or severe enough to garner comment and attention from elected County officials or the public. A formal asset management plan with established maintenance and repair activities and schedules would better guide the Parks Maintenance Division as to what routine and periodic activities need to be completed, and with what frequency, before major corrective work is required. PARKS MAINTENANCE DIVISION'S FACILITIES MAINTENANCE PLAN IS INCOMPLETE The Parks Maintenance Division has a partial facilities maintenance plan that deals with routine custodial maintenance tasks and less critical periodic maintenance, such as repainting of interior facility walls and power washing of sidewalks. In organizations with assets that require maintenance and repair, an essential part of the planning process is the development of a facilities maintenance plan that is detailed enough to allow for scheduling of periodic maintenance activities and inspections for critical facility components, as well as tracking and reporting on those maintenance and repair activities and inspections in order to plan future work schedules or revise the timing, frequency, or type of maintenance applied. The Parks Maintenance Division's current performance measures generally assess custodial and routine work order activities, and the Division needs to develop relevant performance measures to include critical maintenance and repair activities and quantify its outputs and outcomes. In so doing, the Division's operational needs for adequate maintenance and repair of the County's recreational facilities can be better integrated into the Departments future resource allocations and annual work plans. THE DEPARTMENT NEEDS TO IMPROVE ITS ABILITY TO MONITOR RELEVANT PERFORMANCE MEASURES The Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) recommends: "Monitoring and communicating progress toward stated goals and the overall condition of its capital assets with appropriate controls to ensure the validity and accuracy of the information. This process should describe how actual facility condition and performance compares to the targeted standard for each asset type. Governments should also review and report the operating impacts related to capital investments during project implementation and for a specified time period following project implementation." (GFOA Best Practice, Capital Asset Assessment, Maintenance and Replacement Policy(2007 and 2010), Government Finance Officers Association, 2010) The Department of Parks and Recreation has not sufficiently tracked its progress toward achieving its stated facilities goal to: "Provide adequate and well-maintained facilities in each district to meet the needs of the public". The Department lacks formalized plans to reduce its backlog of deferred maintenance and repair, as well as the necessary processes to monitor and report on its progress on these rehabilitative projects. While the Parks Maintenance Division tracks how many individual work orders it completes, the Division has no 19