“What’s worth fixing, what’s worth replacing, and what can we safely leave alone?” It’s a question facility managers get asked constantly as buildings age and budgets tighten. And there’s only one reliable way to answer it: a facility condition assessment (FCA).

An FCA is a structured evaluation of your buildings and systems that shows you where to focus preventive maintenance, when to plan replacements, and how to prioritize capital projects. With clear data in hand, you can move past guesswork and keep facilities safe.

In this guide, we’ll explain what a facility condition assessment is, why it matters, and how to carry one out step by step.

What is a facility condition assessment?

A facility condition assessment (FCA) is a detailed analysis of a facility’s condition including age, materials, current performance, and predicted maintenance. A commercial facility condition assessment can be done for any type of building including offices, schools, manufacturing plants, and multifamily properties.

David Auton, senior director of reliability engineering for C&W Services, explains that an FCA assesses “the ability for a facility to meet an intended purpose or enable an activity.”

What assets does an FCA include?

A FCA will cover all the major systems that keep a building safe and operational, including: 

• Structural components (foundations, framing)

• Building envelope (roof, windows, exterior walls)

• HVAC systems

• Electrical systems

• Plumbing systems

• Interior finishes and features

• Life-safety systems (fire alarms, sprinklers, emergency lighting)

• Site features (parking lots, landscaping, drainage)

Because an FCA is repeated at set intervals, its scope should adapt over time. The list of assets that an FCA covers can increase, depending on the complexity of the building that's being inspected.

What needs to be done when performing an FCA?

Typically, an FCA includes:

• On-site inspections of the facility and major systems (HVAC, electrical, safety equipment)

• Verifying system and asset ages and condition

• Documenting maintenance backlogs and estimating costs

• Prioritizing urgent repairs

• Evaluating energy efficiency and accessibility

FCA regulations vary by country and industry. Check out these resources to better understand which scale would work best for your facility type: 

• ASTM E2018 provides common benchmarks for condition assessments

• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publishes widely used facility rating guides

• Many state facility management agencies make their own scales available online

Assessments are often led by architects, engineers, or inspectors, but facility managers are responsible for using the results to guide budgets and maintenance programs.

What is the Facility Condition Index (FCI)?

The Facility Condition Index (FCI) is a simple way to measure the health of a building. You calculate it by dividing the cost of needed repairs by the replacement value of the facility.

• FCI = Total cost of repairs ÷ Replacement cost × 100

For example, let’s say the estimated repair cost of an office building is $100K, and the replacement cost is $2M. Here’s how you’d calculate your FCI:

• FCI = $100,000 ÷ $2,000,000 × 100 = 5%

A lower percentage indicates a facility in better condition, while a higher score (anything above 30%) highlights the need for investment. 

In this case, a 5% FCI would indicate the building is in relatively good condition, with repairs making up only a small fraction of the total replacement cost. Facility managers can use this metric across multiple assets or buildings to compare conditions, set priorities, and determine where capital investment is most urgent.

Benefits of assessing facility conditions 

A facility condition assessment (FCA) gives you the data you need to manage buildings with confidence. Without it, you’re left guessing about risks, compliance, and where to spend limited capital.

In the sections below, we’ll cover how FCAs support 4 critical areas:

• Risk prevention

• Sustainability compliance

• Preventive maintenance

• Capital planning and budgeting

Risk prevention

Safety is at the core of the facility management process. When you stay on top of your facility, you’re also staying on top of maintenance and repairs — and that directly impacts safety and risk.

Skip regular FCAs and things deteriorate quickly. A leaking roof turns into structural damage, fire alarms stop working as expected, or an old HVAC system fails on a hot day. These breakdowns add costs and put tenants, employees, and customers at risk. 

Falling behind on inspections or codes also opens the door to fines and compliance issues. By keeping assessments on schedule, you protect both the people in your buildings and your organization’s reputation.

Sustainability compliance

Energy efficiency and sustainability aren't just nice-to-haves anymore—they're tied directly to ESG requirements. An FCA gives you a complete view of your facility and a record of how it’s performing over time. With that information, you can forecast energy use, spot systems that are draining resources, and build a long-term plan for meeting ESG goals.

For instance, if your assessment shows a chiller or boiler is both inefficient and near the end of its life, you can budget to replace it with a greener model. This decision lowers utility costs and provides measurable proof of progress on sustainability commitments.

Preventive maintenance

Predictive maintenance uses data and regular assessments to anticipate when equipment will need service, so you can fix issues before they cause failures.

Reactive maintenance, by contrast, is expensive and disruptive. It means big repairs or full replacements once something’s already broken. When equipment fails, it also puts your team and building users at risk.

The payoff for predictive strategies can be substantial. Some organizations report an ROI of up to 400% from making the switch.

In practice, assessments build a history of performance that helps you forecast labor needs, plan for spare parts, and schedule work before problems surface. 

With a structured facility maintenance program and a clear facility maintenance plan, you get more control over costs and fewer surprises.

Capital planning and budgeting

Facility condition assessments give you the data you need to secure upkeep budgets. By turning subjective requests into defensible numbers, they make it far easier to get leadership buy-in.

Condition scores like the FCI translate directly into multi-year spend plans, showing which assets are in good shape, which carry safety or compliance risks, and which require immediate replacement.

With this level of detail, you can model different funding scenarios, reduce overall facilities management costs, and build executive-ready business cases. Instead of guesswork or competing opinions, you walk into budget discussions with hard numbers and clear priorities.

The facility condition assessment process: 6 practical steps

Here are six practical steps you can follow to complete an FCA with confidence.

1. Define scope, goals, and stakeholders

Start with why you’re doing an FCA. Defining your goals upfront determines how deep the inspection should go and what systems to focus on. Consider these goals as a starting point to your discussion: 

• Meet compliance requirements

• Justify capital requests

• Extend the life of mission-critical assets

• Plan for climate adaptation

Your FCA scope should match the goals you set and include core systems. Specialized facilities may need broader coverage. For example, research labs should include scientific assets, while utilities may need to assess site infrastructure like pumping stations or pipelines.

Next, define your stakeholders clearly. Facility managers usually coordinate the process, but engineers, compliance officers, finance teams, and sometimes external regulators should all have input. Bringing in an independent assessor or peer site team is highly recommended as it ensures findings are unbiased and more credible to leadership.

This is also the right stage to decide whether you’ll use a digital twin. A digital twin is an accurate, 3D online model of your facility that captures every room, system, and asset in detail. 

Matterport makes creating one simple: you scan the space once with a compatible camera, and the platform automatically generates a navigable digital model which can then be fine-tuned with precise measurements and documentation. Assessors can then “walk” the facility virtually to ensure proper equipment and safety documentation is readily available for operations — all without needing to be on site. 

Starting your FCA with a digital twin in place pays off later, because the same model can support inspections, cost estimates, capital planning, and ongoing facility or equipment maintenance.

Check out this digital twin of a US manufacturing facility below by clicking around and see for yourself how easy it is to digitally ‘walk’ the space. 

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2. Gather existing documentation

You’ll need to assemble the right documentation before an FCA begins. These records give assessors a baseline for comparison and help them verify the current state of your facility. 

Common documents include:

• As-built drawings to confirm layouts and structural details

• Operations and maintenance (O&M) manuals for equipment and systems

• Work-order history to track past repairs, upgrades, and recurring issues

• Previous FCA reports to benchmark progress and spot long-term trends

Did you know that a facility's 3D digital twin can store documents? Simply add a tag on your twin, and attach all maintenance history and compliance certificates. It’s the most efficient way to guarantee that everyone in your organization can find the right file at the right time.

For more advanced workflows, the SIMLAB Stages feature allows you to overlay BIM and engineering data onto a digital twin. This creates a visual timeline of the facility, showing system locations and how conditions have changed over time. As Anthony Carrino explained during a recent Matterport webinar:

“You can put a finished model and a rough construction model next to each other and they move in sync with each other […] and we can point the camera at finished walls and we basically have X-ray vision. I know where every pipe and wire is.”

Matterport’s digital twin capabilities enable you to build a visual, interactive record that makes assessments faster and more accurate.

 3. Conduct an on-site (or remote) assessment

It's time for the actual inspection now that you’ve set your goals. Provide an assessor with your files and outline your objectives so they know what to focus on from the start. 

Digitize your facility as much as possible to keep things moving efficiently. For example, Takenaka Corporation used a Matterport digital twin during a hotel project to conduct inspections remotely. Teams could walk through the model, check detailed room conditions, and verify quality without traveling — saving time while maintaining accuracy. 

4. Estimate repair and replacement costs

To estimate repair and replacement costs, start by combining inspection findings with reliable cost data and then adjust for real-world factors like inflation and soft costs. Here are the main factors to consider:

• Standardized cost data: Use resources like RSMeans or your organization’s internal cost databases for unit pricing.

• Inflation factors: Adjust costs based on market conditions, regional pricing, and inflation trends.

• Soft costs: Don’t forget project-related expenses beyond materials and labor, such as design fees, permits, and contingencies.

For example, Northumbrian Water invests $250–300 million a year refurbishing and creating new systems. By using Matterport’s digital twins, they’ve found it far more efficient to plan budgets. 

Precise measurements make these estimates more reliable. Switch to Measurement Mode on your digital twin by selecting the little ruler on the bottom right. Now you can take to-the-millimeter measurements and support better cost models. Try it out below:

5. Calculate metrics and prioritize actions

Start by calculating each asset’s FCI. Next, roll those percentages into group scores for increasingly larger systems, buildings, or even your full portfolio.

For each group’s FCI, you can now reverse calculate the replacement value at each level to show dollar impact in your reporting. For example, if the entire electrical system of a facility has a CRV of $10 million and its deficiencies add up to 5%, that means roughly $500,000 in needed repairs. Looking at systems this way makes it easier to compare across categories and prioritize spending.

Include details where repair or replacement spending could deliver future returns, such as energy savings, compliance, or longer asset lifecycles.

Pro tip: Keep your current replacement value (CRV) accurate (it drives deferred maintenance totals), and use a consistent rating scale across systems so scores are comparable over time and across sites. 

Use your numbers to set priorities. Put safety and compliance first, then critical reliability, and finally ROI. The order should fit your facility’s needs.

Finally, integrate your priorities into daily operations. Record the top actions in your FM systems. For example, you can use Matterport Tags inside your digital twin to flag high-priority repairs with notes on cost, risk, and deadlines, and link to work orders in your CMMS.

6. Report findings and integrate with FM systems

Report results so they’re clear for executives and actionable for maintenance teams.

Start by exporting your findings — repair lists, Facility Condition Index (FCI) scores, and cost estimates — into your CMMS, EAM, or BIM platforms. They’ll tie directly into work orders and asset records instead of sitting in a silo.

Next, create visual dashboards and summaries that make priorities obvious.

Your facility condition assessment report should include executive summaries for stakeholders. Executives need a snapshot of the biggest risks, which projects can’t wait, and what investment is required over the next budget cycle.

Pro tip: Your maintenance teams do need the details. Matterport's digital twin uses APIs and SDKs to let spatial data flow directly into your facility management tools.

Finally, set a cadence for reassessment. Many organizations repeat FCAs every 3–5 years, but your own cycle may depend on asset criticality and compliance needs.

When findings are reported clearly and integrated seamlessly, your FCA stops being a one-off document and becomes part of your facility’s daily operations and long-term strategy.

Make your next FCA faster and more reliable

Matterport digital twins let you conduct remote inspections, cutting down travel costs and site visits. You can also centralize all your documents, tags, and reports inside the 3D model, making them instantly accessible when it’s time to plan repairs or request capital. 

Start by speaking to an expert today.