Planned maintenance is a proactive approach to looking after your premises. Rather than just reacting to problems as they occur planned maintenance will keep your premises in good order, ensure you satisfy legal obligations, preserve the value of your building and minimise expensive breakdowns and repairs.
Benefits of planned maintenance include
- Enabling better financial planning
- Minimising costly emergency maintenance and call out feesReduced wastage
- Ensuring compliance with the law e.g. servicing of gas boilers, lifts and fire alarms
Drawing up a planned maintenance schedule
Having a schedule for your planned maintenance programme will enable you to assess what maintenance work needs to be undertaken and when. You can engage a building surveyor to assist with drawing up a schedule of planned maintenance and this is often done in addition to a building survey.
The surveyor will assess the condition of the building, identify what repairs are required and work with you to draw up a prioritised schedule. If you have a lease they will review the details of this agreement to understand the repairing responsibilities you have retained.
A planned maintenance schedule should consider all elements of the building – the roof, the exterior walls, drains, doors, windows and building services such as heating and lighting systems.
When taking on responsibility for the maintenance of a building collect as much information from the previous owner/tenant as possible to help you planned your maintenance programme – including any previous surveys and schedules, details current of contractors and information on the history of the building systems (for example how old is the boiler?).
Managing your maintenance
Allocate responsibility for implementing your planned maintenance to a member of staff. If given adequate time and resources it will be easier for one person to be responsible for updating the schedule, planning the budget and managing contractors.
If your building maintenance is going to require significant time and resources you may look to employ someone in house solely to manage your maintenance. Alternatively you might look to enter into a contract with a company who can deliver a comprehensive maintenance programme on your behalf, engaging and managing the required contractors. The most suitable option will depend on your building, the level of maintenance required and your current resources.
Maintenance contracts
There will be specialist maintenance activities you will want to contract out. Examples of service and maintenance contracts you may need to enter into include:
- Heating
- Electrical and lighting
- Water
- Lift
- Fire extinguishers
- Ventilation
- Fire alarms
- Window cleaning
- Building gutters
To begin with you may want to take out your maintenance and service contracts with the original installing contractor. Contracts are typically ‘comprehensive’ (including parts, labour and inspections) or ‘basic’ with parts and labour charged at cost. What type of contract you choose will depend on the age and condition of your building and its systems, however at a minimum always check the following:
- What is covered by the contract?
- What is NOT covered by the contract?
- What response time is guaranteed?
- What is your redress if the response time is not honoured?
- Who will be carrying out the work?
When choosing contractors the surest way of finding someone who will produce quality work is by recommendation. Find someone you trust who has used your potential contractor before and is prepared to recommend them. Look at the work the contractor has produced, check for professional accreditation and ask contractors to provide a method statement, risk assessment and a copy of their public liability insurance certificate.
There are good reasons for taking out a contract with a big national company. You should be able to expect a good response time and availability of labour, since they should have a big pool of tradesmen. However, you might find that big is not necessarily better in all sorts of ways. How important a customer are you – a small fish in a big pool? Alternatively, going with your own pool of local tradesmen may give you a better, more personal service, but consider what you will do if your plumber is on holiday.
Your maintenance budget
If you have a surveyor draw up your planned maintenance schedule they will be able to provide you with some estimates for the cost of required works. Maintenance and service contracts will also enable you to plan your spending.
Your maintenance costs will entirely depend on the type and condition of your building, but will fall into three types:
- Regular maintenance – this includes all the maintenance you need to do to ensure you meet statutory requirements. Examples include contracts for your boiler maintenance and your fire alarm tests
- Improvements and major works - for example upgrading your heating system or installing a new lift
- Emergencies fund – money spent on dealing with emergencies such as leaks or boiler breakdown
If you can keep track of your costs in this way you can see where your biggest spends are and then look to reduce them where possible. For example if you are spending a lot of money on emergency breakdowns then you might want to look at revising your spending on regular maintenance or improvements to ensure that your systems and equipment are in good working order.
How you plan to fund your maintenance costs will affect your budgeting. For example if you know you will need to do some external cladding work every 20 years you might incorporate this into your budget by putting money into a sinking fund. Alternatively you might decide to carry out fund raising for such work the next time it is required.
If you have tenants in your building you will need to refer to your maintenance budget when setting and administering service charges. It is vital that you keep detailed records of your spending so that you can manage service charges effectively.
Prevention is better than cure. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to save money by neglecting your on-going regular maintenance tasks as you are likely to spend more money in the long run. You want to minimise the amount you are spending on emergency work. If you only react when there is a problem you will pay heavily in terms of emergency call-out fees, repairs and wasted staff time.
Ensure adequate time and resource is given to implementing and reviewing your planned maintenance programme. This will be time and money well spent in the long run.
http://www.maintainyourbuilding.org.uk/
http://www.hse.gov.uk/