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Auburn University Rebuilt Its FDD Program by Limiting Scope, Ranking KPIs Daily, and Sharing Ownership With Its Vendor
Auburn University's FDD program didn't lack ROI, but it lacked enthusiasm and growth, because no one wanted to sit through the boring punchlist meetings.
For 15 years, the university’s FDD vendor regularly uncovered savings. But the process relied on long defect lists reviewed during two-hour vendor calls, which failed to build internal momentum, and we were referred to as "awful and boring".
Many findings from the FDD program turned into maintenance work orders that didn’t align with how technicians actually worked. Instead of actionable outputs like "swap the motor out", the FDD findings required deeper controls, troubleshooting, and often fell between internal teams and contractors.
Rob Engle, Utilities Engineer at Auburn, championed a reset with a new FDD vendor, BuildingLogiX, that combined focus and shared ownership.
BuildingLogiX describes it as an FDD "fusion model," where BuildingLogiX, as the contractor, incrementally hands off FDD program ownership to the internal team. This model is the fusion between the two extremes: (1) a DIY program completely owned and built by the building owner, and (2) an FDD-as-a-service model that is intended to be forever owned by the contractor.
To kick off the reset, Auburn redefined the goal around 3 main KPIs: chilled water excessive pumping (CWEP), and BuildingLogiX proprietary AHU health scoring and building health scoring.
Auburn assigned an experienced technician, Billy Brock, as the "super user" of the new FDD program during the early implementation. Brock resolves about 30 FDD faults per month while fine-tuning the fault-to-work-order process with the BuildingLogiX team to improve future team adoption.
After resolving more than 100 issues, the campus-wide chilled water supply and return differential (delta T) rose from roughly 10 degrees to above 15 degrees, avoiding an impending chiller purchase.
With clearer responsibilities within the Auburn team, the once-dreadful FDD meeting can now focus on KPIs rather than every fault. “We have a punch list. We don’t need to talk about them,” Engle said.
The program’s ROI existed before. Growth in the program required a process that could cultivate user adoption and program scale over time.
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Auburn University's FDD program didn't lack ROI, but it lacked enthusiasm and growth, because no one wanted to sit through the boring punchlist meetings.
For 15 years, the university’s FDD vendor regularly uncovered savings. But the process relied on long defect lists reviewed during two-hour vendor calls, which failed to build internal momentum, and we were referred to as "awful and boring".
Many findings from the FDD program turned into maintenance work orders that didn’t align with how technicians actually worked. Instead of actionable outputs like "swap the motor out", the FDD findings required deeper controls, troubleshooting, and often fell between internal teams and contractors.
Rob Engle, Utilities Engineer at Auburn, championed a reset with a new FDD vendor, BuildingLogiX, that combined focus and shared ownership.
BuildingLogiX describes it as an FDD "fusion model," where BuildingLogiX, as the contractor, incrementally hands off FDD program ownership to the internal team. This model is the fusion between the two extremes: (1) a DIY program completely owned and built by the building owner, and (2) an FDD-as-a-service model that is intended to be forever owned by the contractor.
To kick off the reset, Auburn redefined the goal around 3 main KPIs: chilled water excessive pumping (CWEP), and BuildingLogiX proprietary AHU health scoring and building health scoring.
Auburn assigned an experienced technician, Billy Brock, as the "super user" of the new FDD program during the early implementation. Brock resolves about 30 FDD faults per month while fine-tuning the fault-to-work-order process with the BuildingLogiX team to improve future team adoption.
After resolving more than 100 issues, the campus-wide chilled water supply and return differential (delta T) rose from roughly 10 degrees to above 15 degrees, avoiding an impending chiller purchase.
With clearer responsibilities within the Auburn team, the once-dreadful FDD meeting can now focus on KPIs rather than every fault. “We have a punch list. We don’t need to talk about them,” Engle said.
The program’s ROI existed before. Growth in the program required a process that could cultivate user adoption and program scale over time.
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This is a great piece!
I agree.