VFA, Inc., a company that performs building audits, earlier this year assessed the condition of buildings on Tufts' Medford and Boston campuses for the first time in a decade in order to estimate the cost of the university's deferred maintenance projects.
The company suggested that Tufts spend $30 million per year on projects that have been delayed for a variety of reasons over the past several years. The current annual budget for deferred maintenance is almost half that sum, $17.2 million dollars per year, according to Vice President for Operations Dick Reynolds.
Assessments such as the one conducted by VFA are used to help the university evaluate building deficiencies and estimate the cost of any future projects, according to Director of Facilities Services Bob Burns.
"On a building−by−building basis, [VFA], using their database and using information from a national standpoint, put dollars against whatever deficiencies they find," Reynolds said. "So for each building, we get a total cost of what they think are both the immediate back−log of work that needs to be done and they make a projection of the next five years."
The study compares the cost of renovations to the cost of replacing a building entirely, according to Reynolds.
"The entire university is just under 5 million square feet of space. If we have to replace that all tomorrow, round numbers, it would be over a billion dollars," he said.
After reviewing the study as well as information gathered by Tufts' Facilities Services and using an industry measurement, the university came up with a similar figure as VFA, Reynolds explained.
In order to conduct the study, engineers from VFA worked alongside Tufts Facilities employees to evaluate the campuses on a building−by−building basis, he noted.
"[VFA] engineers, along with our facility services people, go and look at each piece of equipment, walk the roof, look at the building, check the windows, everything else," Reynolds said.
VFA assessed all interior and exterior aspects of each campus building.
"What the VFA study looks at are two essential things about buildings: the building envelope, meaning the walls, the windows, the roofs — you know — the envelope of the building and the systems of the building, heating, air−conditioning, electrical, plumbing, elevators, generators ... things like that," Reynolds said.
The survey report will help the university prioritize which projects on which to work next.
"Some buildings, we've done the outside exteriors and restored them, and some buildings have issues on the inside ... it's hard to say overall which buildings are worse, because some have had some work done and some have not," Rudi Pizzi, director of university maintenance, said. "Now that we have the VFA survey, we are able to look at some of the systems and the overall conditions of the buildings and we can prioritize ourselves which ones we think need to be worked on."
Deferred maintenance projects that have been completed recently include the renovations to Lewis Hall over the summer as well as modifications made to the Mayer Campus Center, he noted.
The university is currently working on the exteriors of 4 Colby St. and the Bromfield−Pearson Building, Pizzi explains, and it plans to work on bathrooms in Haskell and Wren Halls next year.
Facilities will next begin developing a project list that addresses deficiencies based on the VFA's findings, according to Burns.
They will weigh both the deficiencies and the importance of the building when making the list, Reynolds added.
"Even though a building might be number three on the list of what needs to be done, there might be one that's number six that might be more important to us just from a functional standpoint," he said.
