When a capital planning error costs billions of dollars and gets your boss fired, you tend to rethink your approach. That's exactly what happened to Steven Warshaw, CEO of Intellis (formerly the Warshaw Group), when New York City's school facilities condition assessment went catastrophically wrong around 2000.
Speaking at the K12 Facilities Forum, Warshaw shared how that failure led to developing revolutionary capital planning software that's still used by NYC today.
The issue wasn't just poor data—it was how districts think about capital planning.
"Nobody ever fixes components," Warshaw said. "A problem with a component just triggers a project."
The billion-dollar mistake came from looking at all the broken components and asking "what if we fix everything?" without understanding that real-world capital planning works through projects, not individual repairs.
This insight became the foundation for a completely new approach: instead of cataloging broken parts, create automated rules that determine what triggers a project, how projects get scoped, and how they fit into budget constraints.
One of NYC's smartest decisions was making condition assessments ongoing rather than periodic. "Once a project was done, the new assessment happened," Warshaw said. This created reliable, current data that could predict future conditions based on real performance.
The results were striking. Buildings that received capital projects improved dramatically over five years of tracking, while those without projects deteriorated predictably. More importantly, districts could now use their own data to get better at forecasting, turning capital planning from guesswork into science.
Warshaw's system codifies institutional knowledge into automated processes. Instead of manually analyzing every potential project, algorithms can scope out all possible projects based on predetermined rules. The system then prioritizes based on multiple factors—condition, capacity, safety, and sustainability goals—and schedules everything within budget constraints.
"A plan is a list of projects with priorities to reflect strategy, scheduled over time, constrained by budget, set to meet goals," Warshaw said. The key innovation is treating this as a dynamic system that updates daily with real obligations and changing conditions.
What makes this approach truly powerful is scenario analysis. Want to see what happens with a 10% budget increase? Run the model. Need to meet specific energy efficiency goals? Set quantitative targets and let the system calculate the required investment.
Warshaw showed two identical scenarios with different budgets. The visualization revealed entirely different project sequences and timelines based purely on available funding. This capability transforms budget discussions from "what can we do with this money?" to "what will it cost to achieve our goals?" he said.
The system's real strength lies in what Warshaw calls "resilience" — the ability to create scenarios, set goals, automate processes, and respond to adjustments. When NYC's door locking initiative unexpectedly triggered millions in asbestos abatement costs, the system could immediately show how this affected the entire capital plan.
As John Shea, a former top facilities official in NYC's Department of Education noted, the tool is "indispensable" for ensuring capital and operations teams stay aligned, especially when they report through different structures.
Despite the automation, Warshaw emphasized that "reality overrides." People must still input what will actually happen. The system doesn't replace human judgment; it amplifies it by handling the computational complexity while preserving space for real-world adjustments.
Warshaw's parting shot? This year, AI will be creating these analyses. The foundation he's built—automated rule systems, ongoing data collection, scenario modeling—provides the perfect platform for artificial intelligence to take capital planning to the next level.
For school districts still managing capital planning through spreadsheets and periodic assessments, Warshaw's message is crystal clear: the tools exist to transform your approach from reactive maintenance to strategic asset management.
The question isn't whether you can afford to implement better systems—it's whether you can afford not to.
🎥 Watch his full talk below...