It is essential to maintain your property in good order. A well maintained building will provide many years of good service. It is much more cost effective to carry out continued regular maintenance on a property rather than leave everything until 10 or 15 years time. It is a misconception that when a property is new or recently restored no maintenance is required for a long time. This is not so, as deterioration can often occur quickly so regular maintenance is essential to keep products and materials protected and in good order.
Maintenance can be described as continuous protective care to a building fabric and the reason when and why maintenance is carried out can be described as follows:
Planned maintenance – This is maintenance that is carried out on a regular basis in order to prevent a material or product from failing at some time in the future.
Corrective maintenance – this is maintenance carried out to correct a problem such as damp ingress.
Emergency maintenance – work needed in an emergency for health and safety or maybe security reasons for example storm damage. Failure to act could lead to major costs.
In order to maintain a building an organised maintenance plan is drawn up usually setting out a number of planned works to be carried out in a systematic manner on an annual basis. It’s the most cost effective means of maintaining a building rather than on an ad hoc basis of carrying out repairs when failure occurs.
The maintenance plan could involve inspections of particular components at regular intervals to order to record any deterioration and suggest remedial action as required. An example of these inspections could be to plant or equipment that may need regular cleaning or maintaining to keep in full working order. Failure to do so could lead to a health and safety issue.
A maintenance plan will require a pre-determined budget to pay for the inspections, labour, materials, unforeseen repairs etc. required to run the planned maintenance programme. This budget can allow for dedicated funds for reoccurring tasks such as cleaning. It could also include for variable expenditure for works that do not occur every year. Usually within the overall maintenance budget there is a provision for emergency repairs such as storm damage. It is preferred to have all maintenance carried out as variable expenditure so a definitive plan is determined each year for the upkeep of the building. Regular inspections and reporting on specific components can identify possible future failures and expenditure requirements. When setting out a plan each element of the works will be divided into those required long term, say every 5 years e.g. repainting, or those required annually, for example boiler maintenance.
Therefore in order to keep your building in perfect condition and provide efficient service, regular inspection is recommended together with the formation of an annual maintenance plan with a sufficient budget to cover the works. Architects Belfast can assist in the development of the appropriate maintenance plan for your building. They are experts in property maintenance with 30 years of experience. They also offer all types of architectural services for the building industry.
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