GUILFORD, Conn., Sept. 25, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sightlines, a leader in helping academic institutions better manage their facilities and capital investment strategies, today announced that more than 50 percent of its members have chosen to upgrade to the company's ROPA+ service when signing new agreements in 2014, an upgrade rate that has far surpassed initial expectations.
ROPA+ is a next-generation service offering from Sightlines that helps colleges and universities transform their approach to facilities management. The new service is an evolution of Sightlines' proprietary Return-On-Physical-Assets (ROPA) planning model, which helps colleges and universities define their strategic decision making around campus planning and investments. This unique service allows members to optimize their campus investments and contribute to the mission and long-term financial health of their institutions.
"We were confident that ROPA+ would deliver significant value to our members, but we have surpassed even our most optimistic projections with the pace of upgrades from our existing members when their contracts have come up for renewal this year," said Mark Schiff, president and chief executive officer of Sightlines. "This is a tremendous endorsement of the value that ROPA+ is delivering to the higher ed marketplace."
The ROPA+ offering is built on a three-step plan for academic institutions:
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Step One: Discovery – measuring and benchmarking facilities management expenses, teaching core concepts of annual stewardship and asset reinvestment.
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Step Two: Updated Discovery + Prediction to create a model for capital investments in order to meet operating targets and manage facility risks.
- Step Three: Updated Discovery + Prediction + Performance to track accomplishments, assess performance versus the plan, and then rebalance capital investments as needed in order to meet facility needs.
"ROPA+ helps university leaders implement this multi-step process in order to better meet their facilities management goals and to mitigate the risks for potential facility expenses," explained Schiff. "In essence, we bring the concepts of financial management tools – portfolio balance, diversification and risk management – to the facilities management world. Our extraordinary upgrade rate this year confirms that it has quickly become a highly valuable business planning tool for colleges and universities of all sizes."
About Sightlines
Founded in 2000, Sightlines works with more than 500 college and university campuses each year. Their ROPASM (Return-on-Physical-Assets) service provides a holistic approach to defining capital needs and provides an independent view of campus performance, reliably benchmarked against peer institutions. Academic institutions use ROPASM to defend budgets, secure additional funds, evaluate new construction, rebalance budgets, assess maintenance backlogs, determine proper staffing and service levels, and successfully present budgets to boards. Sightlines was named to the 2013 Inc. 5000 list, an annual report from Inc. Magazine of the fastest growing privately owned businesses in the U.S., for the fifth consecutive year. For more information, please call 203.682.4952, go to http://www.sightlines.com or email insights@sightlines.com.