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NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH SELECTS VFA TO ASSESS INFRASTRUCTURE CONDITIONS
Contract from Top Medical Research Center Validates VFA's Leadership in Asset Lifecycle Management Solutions
Boston, MA - August 27, 2002 - VFA, Inc. today announced that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has selected its Capital Planning and Management Solutions (CPMS™) approach. CPMS, an integration of condition assessment services and pure Web technology, will be implemented as a core component of NIH's efforts to establish an organization-wide process for facility lifecycle management. VFA will work with NIH to assess more than nine million square feet of building space at Bethesda and other sites.
NIH's Office of Research Services completes a condition assessment of its facility portfolio on a three-year cycle, which includes research laboratories, hospitals and administration buildings. VFA's assessment methodology empowers NIH with a strategic process for conducting audits of its building conditions, setting benchmarks and achieving established standards of quality. Furthermore, officials will be able to compare all gathered information on an equal, impartial basis. Leveraging CPMS, NIH can promote greater accountability and better articulate maintenance needs, as well as associated funding requirements, to ensure its buildings support the advanced medical research NIH conducts.
"Due to the highly sensitive nature of the research we perform, it is critical that we have a clear handle on our facility conditions and a process by which we can understand where to direct resources for building requirements," said Ed Bain, National Institutes of Health. "Maintaining all facility information within VFA.facility enables us to pinpoint definitively which project takes priority. We can also use this information to ensure we have the structures in place to support and protect the research being done within our facilities."
A renowned organization that includes 27 separate Institutes and Centers, NIH's facilities play a key role in its work to research and uncover knowledge that will help prevent, diagnose and treat disease and disability. The organization selected VFA based on the recent success of CPMS in a pilot project, which was completed in September 2001.
"Facilities are mission-critical to the National Institutes of Health, requiring detailed information to optimize operations," said Jerry Kokos, president and CEO, VFA. "NIH recognizes the impact facilities have on its ability to achieve its organizational goals. The Institutes' selection of VFA's services validates our integrated CPMS approach and demonstrates the growing level of importance government agencies are now attributing to their physical assets."
VFA.facility - VFA's benchmark software solution - is a Web-based enterprise solution that enables users to gather and maintain a repository of detailed building information across an entire property portfolio to support a coordinated and comprehensive approach to facilities capital management. VFA's Capital Planning and Management Solutions, an integration of enterprise-level technology and assessment methodology, empowers users to assess and measure building conditions, update condition information rapidly and communicate the data to facility managers and superiors at sites across the country - all in a timely, cost-efficient manner.
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