AFTER THE FINAL 2016-17 HAD BEEN PUBLISHED …
Thanks, in part, to a large federal/provincial grant it received in early-2017, St. Clair be tackling approximately $6 million in long-overdue repair-and-renovation projects during this academic year.
Despite all of that work, however, the school’s “deferred maintenance” project list remains gargantuan, bearing a total price-tag in excess of almost $30 million.
The college’s 50th anniversary, being celebrated this year, means something other than a cause-for-celebration to the school’s Facilities Management Department. It means that several of St. Clair’s buildings – including its main one in Windsor – are five decades old … old roofing, old plumbing, old electrical systems, old heating and ventilation systems, old mechanical systems, old windows, old paint, old roadways. And old equals repairs-and-replacements, and those equal money.
It is not a unique problem. The entire network of two dozen colleges in Ontario is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year; so the school, cumulatively, have a deferred maintenance backlog estimated in the $750 million to $1 billion range.
The $6 million that St. Clair will spend in 2017-18 is approximately double what it has been able to spend to tackle its deferred maintenance backlog during the past decade.
All of this was one of the subjects of the annual “Risk Assessment” report, presented to the college’s Board of Governors (BofG) during its June 27 meeting.
That report was presented by Associate Vice-President of Communications and Information Technology Amar Singh.
Other potentially “high risk” operational areas confronting the college include Revenue-Generation-Versus-Expenditures (affected, often, by new provincial policies that increase operating costs in an unforeseen manner), Work Stoppages (unionized faculty will be negotiating a new contract this fall), and Information Technology Security (due to the threat of both localized and global cyber-attacks on computer systems).
Other topic areas covered by the Risk Assessment report, aside from those “Big Four”, involve serious problems (including lawsuits) that may arise in these departments: Academics and Student Services, Finance, Human Resources, Health and Safety and Corporate Operations.
Singh assured the BofG that senior management is constantly “on guard”, to identify, evaluate, remedy – or, at least, closely monitor, and review potential risks as they arise.
In addition to polices-and-procedures to eliminate and/or manage risk scenarios, the college maintains an assortment of insurance policies to provide some financial cushion if potential risks turn into real-life crises.
