Total Resource Management and Whitestone Research announce strategic partnership and reselling agreement
Maintenance and repair cost forecasting and enterprise asset management (EAM) are combined to offer a comprehensive solution to facilities and organizations

MARCH 17, 2004 – Alexandria, VA – Total Resource Management (TRM), a leading consulting and information technology solutions provider, today announced a partnership with Whitestone Research, an applied economic research and software development company. This new partnership broadens TRM’s EAM offerings to include the capability to identify historic underfunding of maintenance and repair (M&R) costs as well as to forecast future M&R funding requirements.

The U.S. Department of Defense uses Whitestone Maintenance and Repair Cost Forecast System (MARS) estimates to program roughly $5 billion in facility spending annually. In addition to budgeting, many agencies depend on MARS for condition assessment validation, staffing projections, and long-range planning.

The TRM and Whitestone partnership results in a groundbreaking capability linking their premiere offerings. TRM’s IT solutions for asset management help organizations manage and maintain their infrastructures, facilities and other physical assets. Its solutions unify an organization’s strategic goals with the tactics required to achieve those goals. Whitestone’s industry leading MARS software complements TRM’s solutions by accurately projecting the future needs for an organization’s enterprise assets.

According to Whitestone President Peter Lufkin, “Originally released in 1997, MARS is probably the best known tool available for M&R cost benchmarking, budgeting and facility condition assessment.” The system includes a complete set of pre-defined building models, an extensive library of component and task data, and detailed local cost data for 240 metropolitan areas in North America.”

TRM Executive Vice President for Management Consulting George Korte explains, “Facilities Sustainment is defined as providing resources for maintenance and repair activities needed to keep a typical inventory of facilities in good working order over their typical 50-year service life. A sound Sustainment strategy balances the need to minimize sustainment resource costs with the need to maximize facility life and optimize facility conditions. This includes regularly scheduled inspections, preventive maintenance and effective corrective maintenance throughout the facility life cycle.”

TRM and Whitestone team on powerful cost modeling solution Add One
”This is an extremely complex resource planning problem,” Korte continues. “Many facility managers have neither the time nor the data needed to properly solve the problem. As a result, they often forego the planning process or simply recycle last year’s plan, while applying modest cost inflation factors. This marriage of our robust asset management data solutions with the strong M&R cost modeling system provided by Whitestone creates an industry leading solution that reduces the problem to a manageable scale.”

Whitestone’s Lufkin agrees. “It is obvious to us that our cost forecast capabilities, combined with TRM database solutions, will serve a largely unmet need for sophisticated facility cost planning,” Lufkin says. “We expect the partnership to provide enhancements for existing TRM clients, and be sought after by those who require detailed up front forecasting, particularly to justify funding proposals.”

TRM and Whitestone products and services are already being used by hundreds of public and private sector organizations. The services available under this partnership – as well as a mutual reselling agreement – will bring EAM solutions to many more industries.

About TRM
Total Resource Management, Inc. (TRM) delivers consulting and information technology solutions that help organizations improve the management and performance of their enterprise assets (facilities, infrastructure and production). TRM products and services – many based on the industry leading Maximo® software – help organizations reduce the costs associated with planning, building, deploying, operating, maintaining and utilizing their assets. Over the past decade, TRM has supported nearly 200 clients with solutions involving enterprise asset management (EAM) systems design and deployment, requirements development, project planning and execution, business process improvement, systems engineering and integration, software development, data assurance, organizational change management, business case analyses and business performance measurement, resulting in significant improvements to their business operations.

TRM was founded in 1993. Its headquarters are located in Alexandria, VA, and supporting offices are located across the U.S. TRM’s Advanced Technology Centers are located in Virginia, California, Hawaii and Washington. More information is found at www.trmnet.com.

About Whitestone Research
Whitestone Research, headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, is an employee-owned corporation with principals who are expert in economics, computer science and operations research. Whitestone specializes in applied economic research and software development for both public sector and corporate clients. Whitestone also publishes focused technical reports and software products. The firm specializes in life-cycle cost studies, facility operations cost modeling, economic impact studies, manpower productivity and efficiency measurement, and national defense economics. www.whitestoneresearch.com.

Maximo® is a registered trademark of MRO Software, Inc.