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Facilities Audit

Facilities Audit

Summary

One very tangible way a community can evaluate its age-friendliness is by conducting a facility audit: an evaluation tool that rates a space on ease of access, use and comfort for residents of all ages. Government facilities are a natural place to start. They function as places for people to gather inside and outside for pleasure and for business. For this reason, it is important for facilities to be designed and operated in a way that all residents of all ages can use and enjoy them. Additionally, municipal buildings and facilities are owned and maintained by a municipality, so improvements can be planned and budgeted, making change more feasible and actionable.

This assessment and rating tool consists of both internationally recognized age-friendly criteria and criteria developed from a customer service and service delivery perspective. Broadly, the audit considers the following: Location; Exterior Accessibility; Interior Accessibility; Signage and Way finding; and Amenities, Accommodations, and Comfort.

  • The location covers items such as access to public transportation, proximity to other county government facilities, and how difficult it is to locate the facility.
  • Exterior and interior accessibility rates ease of movement approaching the facility as well as inside the space, including parking, travel distance, walking surface condition, lighting, and the presence of obstructions.
  • Signage and way finding focuses on visible cues in place to help a person navigate the facility.
  • Amenities, accommodations, and comfort looks at customer service, restrooms, and miscellaneous amenities that would make a location appealing or more useable.

The auditing tool is designed with questions that are straightforward and easy to answer and can be used by municipal staff, officials, or residents. A series of questions were developed for each category with possible answers of either Yes/No/Not Applicable or a scale of 1-5. If the question is answered YES, then that amenity is considered “age-friendly.” If the question is answered NO, then a recommendation should be offered to make the amenity age-friendly. If a question is answered with a 1 or 2, the amenity is considered not age-friendly, whereas a 4 or 5, is considered age-friendly. A question answered with a 3 represents a neutral perspective of the amenity in question. The tool’s benefit is that it provides concrete feedback to improve facilities or public spaces indicating both general criteria that can be applied to many different kinds of spaces and still capture site specific strengths and weaknesses

Website: http://www.stlouisco.com/agefriendly

Key facts

Main target group: Older people in general

Other target group(s): Local Governments

Sector(s): Urban development

Desired outcome for older people:
Contribute

Other issues the Age-friendly practice aims to address:
  • Accessibility

Other Issues: Civic Participation

Contact details

Name: Fiegel, Lori

Email address: LFiegel@stlouisco.com

Preferred language(s): English

Age-friendly practice in detail (click to expand):

Engaging the wider community

Project lead: Local authorities

Older people’s involvement: Older people were not directly involved

Details on older people’s involvement: While older adults were not directly involved in the initial testing of the assessment tool, older adults could be solicited to conduct the assessment at various local government facilities as a way to engage older adults in improving facilities and using the volunteers to more efficiently get the assessments completed across dozens of facilities. Through our partnerships with local universities we also have the potential to engage university students in inter-generational activities where students could work with older adults in specific communities to conduct audits for smaller jurisdictions.

Moving forward

Has the impact of this age-friendly practice been analysed: Yes

Was the impact positive or negative:
Positive

Please share with us what you found in detail:
The audits conducted to test the assessment tool included several recommendations at each facility, recommendations that are already being considered by our Public Works Department for implementation in 2016. The recommendations focus mainly on interior lighting, exterior and interior wayfinding/signage, comfortable and adequate seating in waiting areas, and adequate access to buildings for pedestrians and people with disabilities.

Feedback:
We received feedback from two municipalities who reviewed the tool and implemented it at one of their facilities. Both were very complimentary of the assessment, and said that they looked forward to implementing it at more of their locations.

Expansion plans:
Yes, we plan to conduct audits of all major County facilities and implement changes in the coming years. We also plan to include the audit on our website (www.stlouisco.com/agefriendly) and in a toolkit provided to the municipalities to encourage them to conduct similar audits and improvements on their facilities.

Looking back

Reflections:
The project was created as part of a leadership class and therefore had the constraints of a short time frame. Soliciting additional input from surrounding local governments, as well as engaging older adults in conducting the assessment, might have provided ideas for additional adjustments to the survey tool. The timing of the assessments to include additional budget for building improvements would have been ideal.

Challenges:
The biggest challenge faced by the project team was the lack of robust, detailed assessment tools available from other jurisdictions. The project team conducted extensive research and developed their criteria to attempt to quantify the spirit of many checklists. This tool represents the best aspects of the available checklists.