From Spreadsheets to Strategic Asset Lifecycle Management: Manukau Institute of Technology

Key Metrics

• 11,000+ Annual Students

• 7 Campuses

• 59 Buildings

• 2590+ Rooms

• 2040+ Assets

• 15+ Facility Team Users

Key Outcomes

• Single source of truth established: All asset data consolidated from disconnected spreadsheets and individuals’ memory into a structured, organisation-wide digital asset register.

• Accurate budget forecasting unlocked: The ability to predict and model asset costs ahead of time has transformed financial planning, replacing retrospective analysis with proactive lifecycle management.

• Stakeholder confidence built: Visual, digestible reporting has empowered the property team to communicate complex asset data clearly to senior management and finance - and field their growing demand for on-demand insights.

• Operational and financial risk reduced: Identifying areas of potential savings across five campuses and moving toward planned maintenance has significantly reduced the risk of unexpected asset failure.

• Real-time field capability: Mobile access allows contractors and team members to update asset information and report issues in the field, eliminating the need to return to desktop to log work.

About Manukau Institute of Technology

Manukau Institute of Technology (MIT) is one of New Zealand’s largest providers of technical, vocational, and professional training, with more than 50 years of experience transforming lives through education.  

With campuses across Ōtara, Auckland CBD, TechPark, and Manukau City Centre, MIT serves over 11,000 students annually - delivering academic qualifications from certificate to degree level, with a particular commitment to improving tertiary education outcomes across South Auckland.

Learn more at manukau.ac.nz.

The Challenge

Before engaging FMI Works, MIT’s approach to asset management was a study in fragmentation.  

Critical information about the institution’s assets - from individual chairs to rooftops across five campuses - existed in a patchwork of disconnected spreadsheets, with no consistency between sources and no single view of the data. Worse still, much of the most valuable institutional knowledge existed only in the heads of individual team members, creating significant operational risk and making it impossible to draw reliable conclusions or share accurate information with the broader business.

Without a consolidated picture of asset data, the property team struggled to quantify the financial impact of deferred works, forecast future budgetary needs, or make a compelling case to finance for investment. The organisation was locked in a reactive posture - unable to plan ahead, unable to benchmark, and unable to demonstrate the value of effective asset management to the stakeholders who needed to support it.

“How can we be part of a community that learns and grows if we still have our assets on an Excel spreadsheet? We couldn’t benchmark or have those real data insights that inform our journey from reactional to planned.”
- Kim Smith, Asset and Contracts Manager, Manukau Institute of Technology

The Solution

MIT partnered with FMI Works in 2017, with Asset and Contracts Manager Kim Smith leading the implementation. Drawing on her background as a business analyst, Kim understood from the outset that sustainable transformation required getting the data foundation right before anything else.  

The first step was consolidating all available asset data into a single, structured digital register - a painstaking process of validation, classification, and quality control, carried out in close collaboration with the FMI Works success team.

That foundational work paid dividends. With a clean, structured asset register in place, the team could begin extracting the insights the business had never previously had access to - data skylines, lifecycle modelling, expenditure forecasting, and visual reporting that could finally communicate the story of MIT’s assets to decision-makers across the institution.

“You have to put the foundation in first. It’s important to have really good quality data, and a good data structure from the outset - without it you can’t actually do anything. It takes time, and it takes time to mature, but you won’t see any outcomes without it.”
- Kim Smith, Asset and Contracts Manager, Manukau Institute of Technology

The Impact

From invisible to indispensable

The transformation in how MIT’s property team operates, and how it is perceived across the organisation, has been significant.  

Where asset management was once invisible to the broader business, it is now central to financial planning and strategic decision-making. Senior management and finance, who previously had no visibility over asset condition or lifecycle costs, are now actively requesting data from Kim’s team. Visual reporting tools have made it possible to convey complex asset information in formats that non-technical stakeholders can immediately act on - turning what was once a back-office function into a valued strategic capability.

“FM is all about invisible assets, so it’s been hard to show what we’ve been working on. But we’re at the stage now where people are getting really excited - it’s real asset lifecycle management.”
- Kim Smith, Asset and Contracts Manager, Manukau Institute of Technology

Forecasting, accountability, and the road ahead

With accurate lifecycle data now available, MIT has moved from reactive to proactive - identifying savings opportunities across its five campuses, forecasting asset expenditure with confidence, and building the planned maintenance programme that will reduce the risk of unplanned failures and the financial and reputational exposure that comes with them. The integration of asset lifecycle management and facilities management through the FMI Works platform is helping MIT unlock value across both disciplines simultaneously, with mobile capability giving the team the real-time field access they need to keep data current as the portfolio continues to grow.

“People generally are expecting information to be at their fingertips - not sitting on drives or requiring someone to interpret. It needs to be accessible, readable, and be there in a timely manner.”
- Kim Smith, Asset and Contracts Manager, Manukau Institute of Technology