Town Council Considers New Facility Management Software

By Adam Swift

A new computerized asset management system could help the town better track potential repairs across its nearly 600,000 square feet of public buildings and devise a long-term capital plan.

At Tuesday night’s Town Council meeting, the council heard from representatives from Brightly about its Software as a Service (SaaS) program for asset management. The council has yet to officially decide if it is going to enter into a contract with Brightly or another company for an asset management system for its public buildings.

“There are three main points to what is being proposed,” said Luke Anderson, an enterprise solutions consultant for Brightly. “We’ll have boots on the ground, we will have folks who will come through and walk through each building, identify what it is that you physically own, from the air conditioning to the electrical systems, the fire alarm systems, the security systems … and essentially establish an inventory of what’s owned, what condition is it in today, and how much is it going to cost when it does need to be replaced.”

That information would then be put into an inventory for Town Manager Tony Marino and the public works team to maintain and take care of on a day-to-day basis, Anderson said.

With the Brightly system, there would be avenues for employees or residents to let the town know about facilities concerns that could be immediately addressed. The inventory system would also help provide a schedule for regular maintenance of town-owned facilities and systems.

“This is a schedule that establishes how much work do we have to do and how do we organize it, how do we make sure the right people are going to the right place to get the work done,” Anderson said. 

The final piece of the program is looking at asset conditions and ahead to potential replacement dates and costs for those facility assets.

“So if it is in good condition right now, it is going to last 10 more years,” said Anderson. “But if you are calling in a vendor every six months for a brand-new part, you’re probably not going to keep it for another 12 years, you’re probably going to replace it sooner, so it gives them a way to track it, it gives them a way to keep up with it.”

What the program will ultimately create is a way to track assets that will need to be replaced over a three to five year period and their costs.

In other business, Town Manager Tony Marino announced that the town has hired a new treasurer/collector. Current Nahant Treasurer/Collector Brendan Carritte will take over the same position in Winthrop on August 29.