Flinders Christian Community College

The Customer: Flinders Christian Community College

Flinders Christian Community College is an independent, co-educational, inter-denominational Christian school located in the state of Victoria, Australia. With campuses in Carrum Downs, Mt Martha, and Tyabb, Flinders offers education from Kinder to Year 12. The college places a strong emphasis on professional learning and utilises advanced technology to support its education program. The learning environment at Flinders is characterised by its caring, structured, empowering, and stimulating atmosphere, catering to a diverse range of interests and abilities. With an enrolment of 1727 students and a staff of 350 across all campuses, Flinders is committed to providing high-quality education and fostering holistic development in its students. 

The Challenge: Streamlining asset management during COVID-19 uncertainty 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Flinders faced numerous requests for information regarding room sizes and asset classifications. However, they lacked the capability to provide this essential data. Understanding their asset inventory, assessing its condition, and justifying budget approvals from the board became increasingly challenging.  

Flinders needed a comprehensive solution to address these issues. They were on the hunt for an 'off the shelf' asset management solution that could be quickly implemented without extensive customisation. While Flinders recognised the value of a highly customisable system, they preferred a solution that was practical and straightforward, minimising the time required for configuration.  

"Having a strong support team helped us make our decision," says Flinders Property Manager Kell Jackson. "The SPM Assets team were able to adjust large quantities of data, set up fields and naming conventions and speed up many aspects of the surveying process. We compared a range of high-end commercial solutions to asset management, surveying and building tracking, and discovered that SPM Assets had a cost-effective solution for an educational setting." 

The Solution: Asset management software, training, and a learning curve 

SPM Assets provided Flinders with a cloud-based asset management software solution, with asset reference libraries and enabling the establishment of a robust database. This facilitated a swift understanding of the institution's physical assets, allowing for the creation of simple to complex asset lifecycle plans.  

"Our system is smaller than the normal commercial application as our campus does not have as many rooms as a hotel complex or larger university campus," Kell explains. "SPM Assets tailored the package to our requirements and priced it accordingly." 

" SPM Assets offered extensive training and support to ensure that we understood concepts and that any knowledge gaps were addressed," Kell explains. "We were supported through this process to ensure that we understood the concepts were clear and that we could move forward with confidence."  

This was achieved with our training program. Our team provided support in strategic asset management, guiding Flinders through the implementation process.  

The Results: Insightful asset management now and in the future 

Flinders has experienced significant improvements in asset management since implementing our asset management software. Visual photographs attached to each entry for every room have enhanced their ability to ascertain standard setups and assess asset conditions during surveys. They are also now able to effectively track various aspects such as changes in buildings, damage, condition grading of assets, total sizes, and values of rooms, providing valuable insights into renovation trends and replacement costs, as well as guides for room capacity and mapping functions. "This is giving us interesting data for renovation trends and replacement costs, as well as guides for room capacity and mapping functions," says Kell.  

Leveraging GPS locations and pre-set components with associated costings has also boosted Flinders' asset management capabilities. The integration of these features has streamlined mapping and data analysis, providing the College with valuable financial data to guide strategic decisions. Flinders has primarily used SPM Mobile as the data capture tool to complete property condition assessments across the two campuses (Tyabb and Carrum Downs). They have now started to use SPM Assets to produce the reporting that they were unable to do during COVID, mainly budget forecasts. 

Additionally, Flinders has created bespoke property quality standard questions to measure the performance aspect of the buildings, mainly to meet internal policy requirements around brand guidelines and child safety onsite. "We'll continue using this system to survey components each year to keep our campuses up to date," says Kell. "This will ensure we have reliable data and can use it to strengthen our understanding of our assets." 

If any of Flinders' challenges sound familiar to you, get in touch and we'll talk about how our software solutions and training can transform your asset management.