For Universities, asset management is about protecting people, education, and history.
With thousands of people moving across campus daily, managing a vast portfolio and scheduling maintenance is complex to say the least.
In practice, maintenance decisions are made based on partial inspections, limited access and tight shutdown windows. Inspectors dangling off ropes, using scaffolding or elevated work platforms increase liability risks and can cause disruption to campus operations.
But more importantly, these methods limit how much of a building can actually be assessed, meaning issues can go unnoticed, and decisions delayed until more information is available.
Martin Ayres, Head of Strategic Asset Management at University of Sydney:
“We can have 80,000 people here a day, from staff to students, so there is a lot of risk that we need to manage.”
In recent years, leading institutions such as the University of Sydney have adopted Trendspek to take control of their assets for safer, smarter, and more proactive decision-making.
But why rethink inspections in the first place?
Vast portfolios, high risk environments
Typically, a University campus is comprised of a mix of heritage-listed buildings and modern facilities.
With different materials, building ages and degrees of degradation, this means that diagnosing potential issues manually can be a time-consuming process.
Methods such as rope access, cherry pickers and EWPs are typically used for spot or representative inspections, focusing on an area of interest and only covering 20–30%, instead of the entire structure. This is usually due to a limited window to take the buildings offline, to minimise impact to the wider community.
While this approach supports repairs in the short term, the trade off is that decisions are made without full visibility, and issues outside the inspected area can go unnoticed.
Over time, this creates a cycle where:
01. Safety risks and community disruption increase
High-traffic campuses mean that rope access or EWPs introduce liability, and when issues are found late, urgent works are more disruptive.
02. Partial data delays confident decision-making
With only 20–30% visibility, teams are forced to prioritise based on incomplete information, often deferring works or overcompensating with conservative budgets.
03. Information becomes harder to verify over time
Manual reporting takes time to compile and can slow down collaboration. Without centralised data, teams must rely on individual engineering drawings and paper reports, which delay condition assessments and lead to guesstimates in capital forecasting.
The result? Larger backlogs. Higher costs. More reactive maintenance.
⚠️ The cost of waiting? £13.8 billion.
Unfortunately, waiting comes at a cost.
Years of underinvestment have left universities with ageing infrastructure and growing maintenance backlogs. In the UK alone, according to the Department for Education and UK National Audit Office, £13.8 billion is the current cost of deferred maintenance across Britain's education estate.
More importantly, the reportt highlights that delaying maintenance can increase future costs by up to 1.5x within just 2 - 4 years
So, what are Universities doing about it?
Why Universities are going digital
To reduce the cost of waiting, universities are rethinking how inspections are done.
The rise of 3D platforms like Trendspek has offered a practical solution for Universities. Trendspek converts drone-captured photogrammetry, BIM, GIS and photos into engineering-grade 3D models of built assets.
With 80-90% more external coverage and <2mm resolution, this enables full visibility across hard-to-reach areas of buildings and allows engineers to identify, annotate and assess risks early, without needing to be on site.
Instead of waiting for issues to surface through limited inspections, teams can continuously access a complete view of asset condition.
The result is a living digital portfolio that supports:
- Fully remote inspections from any web browser
- Reduced reliance on physical access and unplanned shutdowns
- More precise, evidence-based condition assessments
- Faster collaboration between teams and contractors
- Ongoing tracking through integration with FM systems
This shifts asset management from reactive to proactive, reducing the need to defer decisions in the first place.
Success Story: The University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is one example of this shift in action.
They digitally inspected 110 buildings across their Camperdown campus, one of Australia’s most important educational precincts.
Rather than relying on periodic, partial inspections, the team created a complete digital record of their campus, enabling them to assess condition, prioritise works, and plan ahead with confidence.
Key outcomes included:
- 110 mixed-age buildings transformed into high-fidelity 3D models
- Data used to inform a 25-year asset management roadmap
- Integration with facilities management systems
- Fully templated inspection workflows, repeated across entire asset portfolio
Bill Chant, Senior Engineer - Asset Management & Operations, University of Sydney:
“The result has been long-term use of the data for condition ratings, material-based forecasts, and portfolio-wide risk modelling. With vast options for how the data will be used going forward to manage campus assets.”
Martin Ayres, Head of Strategic Asset Management at University of Sydney:
"Some assets will be recaptured and inspected as often as each year, while others can be inspected every five or even ten years. The data we’ve captured will help guide that program of ongoing work. This tool is helping us manage risk, and feeds nicely into our shift from reactive to proactive asset management."
Want to see how it could work for your campus?
Trendspek supports leading institutions globally with better data, safer outcomes, and smarter decisions across thier asset portfolios.
If you're exploring how this could work for you, Fiona from our team can walk you through how other universities are setting up their inspection workflows.
