Facility Condition Assessments (FCA) and FCI: How MentorLens Standardizes Asset Data for Better Capital Decisions

Fixing Asset Data for Facility Management

‍Learn how MentorLens™ improves FCA and FCI with standardized taxonomy, consistent ratings, evidence capture, and a living baseline—at lower cost.

Facilities teams don’t struggle because they lack opinions about what’s wrong. They struggle because they lack consistent, complete, defensible condition data across an entire portfolio—data they can trust enough to drive funding decisions.

That’s why Facility Condition Assessments (FCAs) and theFacilities Condition Index (FCI) are important across campuses, healthcare systems, airports, and industrial sites. They’re the backbone of capital planning conversations. But in many organizations, the FCA process still produces the same outcome: a large report that’s expensive to create, difficult to update, and quickly becomes stale.

MentorLens™ is designed to change that. It strengthens the asset data foundation that FCAs and FCI depend on—so organizations can capture condition information at scale, standardize how it’s evaluated, and keep the baseline current year after year.

Why FCI and FCA efforts break down in real portfolios

On paper, FCI is simple: the cost of identified needs divided by replacement value. In practice, it only works if the underlying condition assessment is built on data that is:

·     Complete (the portfolio is actually covered)

·     Consistent (ratings mean the same thing everywhere)

·     Evidence-based (deficiencies are anchored in observable facts)

·     Transparent (costs and assumptions can be explained)

·     Maintainable (updates don’t require starting over)

That’s a tall order in complex environments:

·     Campus portfolios include a wide range of building types, ages, and systems—and multiple teams and vendors collecting data in different ways.

·     Healthcare adds stringent compliance and operational constraints, where criticality can’t be inferred from a score alone.

·     Airports require constant operations and coordination, where phasing and access constraints matter as much as the deficiency itself.

·     Industrial environments tie condition to reliability risk and uptime, with constant tension between maintenance and capital renewal.

Across all of these sectors, the common bottleneck is the same: asset data collection and condition assessment aren’t standardized or scalable.

MentorLens™ - built for scalable condition data you can defend

MentorLens™ focuses on the front end of the FCA lifecycle: capturing and structuring asset and deficiency data in a way that stands up to scrutiny and can be refreshed over time.

1) Standardized taxonomy that makes portfolio data comparable

A condition program is only as strong as its definitions. If one team labels an issue as “HVAC,” another as “Mechanical,” and a third as “Air Handling,” aggregation becomes guesswork.

MentorLens™ supports a standardized taxonomy—across buildings, systems, and assets—so data collected in one facility can be compared to data collected in another. This is the foundation for credible portfolio rollups like:

·     System-level condition summaries

·     Building and campus heat maps

·     Consistent deficiency categories for program planning

·     Reliable benchmarking over time

When taxonomy is consistent, leadership stops debating what the numbers mean and starts debating what to fund.

2) Consistent ratings that reduce subjectivity

Condition ratings only create value when they’re applied the same way across sites and assessors. In many FCA programs, ratings drift overtime or vary widely between vendors.

MentorLens™ helps standardize ratings by tying them to clear criteria and consistent workflows. The result is fewer “opinion-based”assessments and more repeatable scoring—essential for any organization that wants to scale self-performed assessments or manage multiple assessors without losing comparability.

3) Evidence capture that turns findings into decisions

Facility leaders are often asked to justify funding requests to finance, boards, regulators, or internal governance groups. “We think it’s bad” isn’t enough.

MentorLens™ emphasizes evidence-based capture—photos, notes, location details, and structured deficiency descriptions—so each finding is tied to observable facts. That evidence trail is what transforms a backlog list into a defensible narrative:

·     What’s wrong

·     Where it is

·     Why it matters

·     What should be done

·     How the estimate was derived (and when it was captured)

4) Cost-effective capture of missing data across the entire portfolio

One of the quiet truths of FCA work is that the biggest cost isn’t calculating FCI—it’s collecting reliable baseline data, especially when you’re dealing with dozens or hundreds of buildings.

MentorLens™ helps teams capture missing asset and condition data efficiently and consistently across a whole portfolio. That matters because the most common failure mode of an FCA program isn’t “wrong numbers”—it’s incomplete coverage and stale inventories.

When field capture is easier and more standardized, teams can expand coverage, reduce rework, and avoid paying repeatedly to “rediscover”the same assets.

5) A living baseline instead of a one-time report

Traditional FCAs are often treated as big-bang studies:invest heavily, generate a report, and then watch it age.

MentorLens™ supports a living baseline approach.Instead of starting over every cycle, teams can refresh condition and asset data continuously or on a planned cadence—annually, biannually, or aligned to capital planning cycles. This keeps portfolio condition intelligence current, improves confidence in FCI trends, and reduces the organizational friction of “re-assessment season.”

6) Self-performed FCAs at a fraction of the cost

Many organizations rely on external FCA studies because the work feels too specialized or too burdensome to do internally. But the economics don’t scale—especially for large portfolios.

By standardizing capture, ratings, and evidence, MentorLens™ enables organizations to self-perform FCAs (or adopt a hybrid model with targeted consulting support) at a fraction of the cost of traditional study cycles—without sacrificing defensibility or consistency.

7) Defensible prioritization with audit trails

Funding decisions require prioritization logic that people trust.

MentorLens™ strengthens prioritization by ensuring the underlying dataset is structured, consistent, and traceable—so prioritization can be defended with an audit trail rather than debated as subjective judgment. In complex environments, this credibility is what turns condition data into action.

Better asset data sets up everything that comes next

When condition assessments are standardized and scalable, organizations gain more than a backlog list. They gain a foundation for the next layer of decision-making:

·     Risk and criticality analysis aligned to mission needs

·     Scenario-based capital planning (what happens if we fund at X vs Y?)

·     Constraint-aware work packaging and phasing

·     Clear performance tracking over time

MentorLens™ starts where outcomes are won or lost: asset data collection and condition assessment. And when that foundation is strong, the rest—risk analysis and capital planning—becomes faster, clearer, and more defensible.

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Learn more about MentorLens™ and MentorAPM solutions for risk analysis and capital planning:

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Risk and Criticality Analyzer

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