BRG Cloud and 21 universities through with WMS chapter

TORONTO, USA: In support of COU's mission, BRG has announced the successful rollout of an advanced Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) that now services 21 member institutions of the COU. The new system went live in July of 2014 after an accelerated six month implementation period.

The Council of Ontario Universities (COU) advances higher education in Ontario, Canada through advocacy, research and policy development for its member institutions.With identified opportunities for increased productivity and innovation as well as clearly defined cost savings and avoidance opportunities, the Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) provided funding to the consortium of universities under the Productivity and Innovation Fund (PIF). The University of Toronto acted as the lead institution through procurement and implementation.

As the announcement further tells, based on software from ARCHIBUS Inc. and implemented into BRG's Cloud SolutionsTM hosted infrastructure, the implemented IWMS solution provides the COU user group with a best-in-class result to manage their inventory of facilities space, a critical asset of the member institutions amounting to over 8.4 million square meters of space.

Among the participating institutions are the University of Toronto, University of Guelph, University of Ottawa, Western University, York University, McMaster University, the University of Waterloo and 14 others.

"Explaining how university space is being used is an ongoing responsibility of each institution. With increasing emphasis on accountability, universities are expected to ensure that their use of resources, including physical facilities, is efficient and that appropriate information on utilization is available to the government and the public. The implemented system contains implicit utilization measures for physical space by category and has a significant financial impact on capital planning and has the potential to strongly impact cost recoveries," said Todd Hutton, BRG's Account Director for the project.

Based upon a foundation of scaled CAD drawings, the detailed data maintained in the system provides transparent visibility into space utilization allowing the universities to generate operating and capital cost efficiencies, a mandate of the Ontario Government's commitment to academic infrastructure within its ten-year $60 billion infrastructure plan.

The system is expected to help inform future policies and procedures as a result of improved reporting capability.