You can find detailed instructions for completing a Facilities Master Plan (FMP) in Engineering Manual (EM)-7310-4 Facilities Planning (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees). Your FMP will contain a lot of general information about your unit's business, how well your existing facilities match your unit's work and visitor use, and recommendations for future actions that will enhance the support your facilities provide to your programs.

Remember that the Facilities Master Plan identifies the facilities needs of the unit and makes broad scale recommendations. You will utilize the Preliminary Project Analysis to identify details and make decisions for specific projects.

The following is just one way to organize a Facilities Master Plan. You may find that you need to organize your plan differently because of your local circumstances.

This picnic structure is part of the Lower Jemez Recreation Complex Forest: Santa Fe District: Jemez Region: 3

Executive Summary

Introduction

Management Direction, Influences, and Considerations

Workforce Analysis Summary

Inventory of Existing Administrative and Recreation Sites

Recommendations

Approvals

Appendices

Examples

Executive Summary

It is always a good idea to summarize the recommendations from your facilities master plan in a short section at the beginning of the document. Besides providing a quick reference for managers, it confirms that you have a cohesive plan. Inability to summarize may mean that your plan is just a jumble of ideas and doesn't really have an overall goal or direction.

Introduction

This is a good place to put items like a list of team members, information about previous facilities master plans, a summary of how the plan will be implemented and monitored, and the purpose, process, and other important information from the team charter.

Management Direction, Influences, and Considerations

You will need to identify the factors that impact your facility recommendations. Your Region or Station Facilities Management Strategy will be a major guide in developing your unit's recommendations, as will USDA space utilization requirements. Other influences may include service wide direction such as the National Fire Strategy, state or local government plans or ordinances, tourism and recreation demographic trends, cooperative agreements or opportunities with other agencies, and natural resource impacts and issues. You will find a longer list of possible influences in Step 2 of EM-7310-4 Facilities Planning (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees).

Workforce Analysis Summary

If your unit has recently completed a workforce analysis, you need to refer to it and include summary information from it that explains where each sort of work should occur and how many employees it will take to perform the work.

If your unit has not completed a workforce analysis in a long time, an analysis must be completed before the facilities planning team can make recommendations. It will not be possible to forecast what sorts of administrative facilities are needed in which locations without first identifying where each sort of work should occur and how many employees it will take to perform the work.

Inventory of Existing Administrative and Recreation Sites

Fortunately, you will be able to use that mountain of data collected and recorded in the Natural Resource Manager data system (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees) to complete your site inventory. A detailed list of data that should appear on the inventory is shown in Step 4 of EM-7310-4 Facilities Planning (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees). You will need all this information when you evaluate and make recommendations. You should summarize the data for this section of your FMP. If you want to display more in-depth data, you can refer to an appendix or incorporate tables, plans, or lengthy documents by reference.

Your summary should include the location and a brief history of each site, the number, type, and condition of the constructed features (buildings, roads, trails, utilities, etc.), health and safety concerns including hazardous materials, energy efficiency and sustainability features or concerns, deferred maintenance backlog, accessibility limitations, whether structures and sites comply with the Built Environment Image Guide and unit thematic design guidelines, whether structures or sites are eligible for or listed on the National Register of Historic Places or should be evaluated for listing, and any other distinctive features or concerns.

Recommendations

After all the information is collected, the facilities master planning group will analyze it and make recommendations about the best locations for facilities to support existing and future work and visitor use. The facilities master planning group will evaluate existing facilities and possible new construction and leases for capacity and suitability for the anticipated uses and for cost effectiveness.

This section will contain a summary of suggestions for each site and building, and a brief mention of the major factors that lead to the recommendations. Each structure and site will be recommended for retention, alternate uses, or decommissioning. Consolidation suggestions for sites or building uses and recommendations for acquiring new structures or new sites should also be incorporated.

Priorities for recommended changes should be identified in this section as well.

Approvals

Of course, the unit Facilities Master Plan must be signed by the Forest Supervisor or Station Director. In those cases where facilities from more than one unit are included, the Supervisor or Director for each unit should sign the plan.

The FMP must be approved by your regional office or station headquarters, so include space for those signatures also.

Appendices

The appendices to your FMP should include or incorporate by reference such things as:

• Site plans for each existing site.
  
  
• Existing facility inventory or spreadsheet including Facilities Condition Index rating as explained in Step 4 of EM-7310-4 Facilities Planning (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees).
  
  
• Facilities Rating Spreadsheet , if used
  
  
• Any existing agreements, inventories, guidelines, or development plans that affect the recommendations of the FMP

Examples

• Northern Region Facilities Master Plans (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Bighorn National Forest Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Boise National Forest Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Mt. Hood National Forest Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Pacific Northwest Region Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Plumas National Forest Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Sawtooth National Forest Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)
  
  
• Siuslaw National Forest Facilities Master Plan (Web site available only to FS and BLM employees)