Achieving the City of Pickering’s Goals for a Growing Community With Gordian’s Planning Solutions

Located on the northern shores of Lake Ontario, the City of Pickering shines as an idyllic place to live, work and play. This sentiment is shared by the many who’ve decided to relocate to the area, which is poised to experience high population growth over the next decade.

One of the main advantages of living in Pickering is the city’s exceptional approach to facilities and infrastructure management. Pickering’s journey began with a vision to transform the standard approach of municipal facility operations from a baseline service to one that deals with full lifecycle costing and robust capital planning. This ambitious goal, and its successful development, started with the need to choose a facilities planning solution that fit the city’s current and future needs.

Challenge: Navigating the Complexities of Municipal Facility Management for a Growing Community

With an expanding population, increasing demands and a diverse portfolio of municipal facilities, Pickering’s leaders identified the need for a comprehensive planning solution. The standard “basic maintenance” approach was insufficient for the city’s growth, adding further pressure to find the right solution in a timely manner.

Boasting a population of approximately 100,000, Pickering had a substantial portfolio of facilities that required comprehensive management, including lifecycle costing, full cost of ownership and rigorous capital planning. The city also faced a backlog of deferred maintenance and the impending implementation of provincial asset management legislation, which required detailed and accurate facility information by 2025.

Solution: Implementing a Comprehensive Facility Management System

After exploring an array of potential options, one clear choice emerged: Gordian’s Facilities Planning Solutions. Advanced features such as robust data collection and analytical tools stood out, offering predictive modeling and detailed reporting capabilities.

Understanding the potential that Gordian’s Facilities Planning Solutions offered, the City of Pickering invested significant time (approximately three years) and resources into collecting and refining facility data, transforming it into a comprehensive database. Upon recognizing the full capabilities of Gordian’s Facilities Planning Solutions, the team also decided to maximize its use by hiring a dedicated power user to manage and update the system continuously. Their database quickly became the cornerstone of Pickering’s annual capital budgeting process for facilities, providing accurate lifecycle information, estimated replacement costs and detailed asset conditions.

Results: Achieving Excellence in Facility Management and Strategic Planning

Through innovative data collection, analytical tools and a commitment to making the most out of every resource at its disposal, the city has seen tremendous success towards meeting its initial goal of transforming its operations. The implementation of the right planning solutions yielded impressive results for the City of Pickering, which now has a robust and accurate database that informs its annual budgeting and capital planning processes. This proactive approach has allowed Pickering to manage its facilities capital costs more effectively, reducing the backlog of deferred maintenance and ensuring compliance with provincial asset management legislation well ahead of the 2025 deadline.

“Our Gordian-VFA Facilities database is an invaluable resource as the City of Pickering faces both dramatic new growth and aging infrastructure through contemporary fiscal constraints.  With good information available at our fingertips, linked to accurate industry-based costing, we are poised to recommend the best possible choices.”

Across the span of just one decade, Gordian’s Facilities Planning Solutions have become integral to the city’s capital budget process, with various departments relying on its data for strategic planning. The city’s ability to present clear, data-driven budget requests has improved vastly, leading to increased trust and support from stakeholders. Overall, the City of Pickering’s investment in facilities planning solutions has transformed its facility management practices, positioning it as a local leader in municipal asset management.

Ready to see how Gordian can help your organization? Explore assessment and capital planning solutions today.