In today’s tumultuous economic climate, corporations are searching for ways to reduce expenses and unfortunately, many times this means differing part of your maintenance budget that is used to upkeep and maintain your facility. This is a practice that is not uncommon for many businesses, rather than adopting a proactive maintenance approach that would save them more money over the life of the building.
What is Deferred Maintenance?
Deferred maintenance is the practice of postponing maintenance activities such as repairs on your portfolio of properties to save short-term overhead costs, to meet budgetary guidelines, or to realign available remaining budget funds. While this can be an effective way to pinch pennies, differing regularly scheduled maintenance and repairs will result in increased maintenance and capital expenses for roof failures due to neglect.
Dangers of Deferring Maintenance
We have all learned that it’s easier and much cheaper to regularly change the oil in our cars than it is to replace bearings and other engine components that fail due to not having performed regular oil changes. Your building maintenance works in a similar fashion: You can same money today by not doing the maintenance but differing it will always cost you more in the long run.
3 Tips to Avoid Deferred Maintenance
Deferred maintenance doesn’t have to be the norm. We’ve put together a few tips to help you can avoid getting stuck in a never-ending cycle of deferred maintenance.
Tip #1: Track All Maintenance Activity
To make data-driven decisions, facility managers need a detailed, high-level overview of where maintenance budget monies are being spent. Utilizing a portal or cloud-based software to record and track all work orders and open projects can boost productivity. With this software, you and your team will have access to data, work order history, service requests and other documentation to help you make a strategic plan for all your facility maintenance. It’s also important to note that many experienced roofing contractors will utilize a similar software system, that you may have access to via portal to track the status and history of your portfolio.
Tip #2: Conduct an Audit of Your Portfolio
As a facility manager, you cannot make strategic maintenance decisions without up-to-date data on your entire roofing portfolio. If you don’t have the data you need, an audit may be needed to gauge the overall condition of your roofing portfolio. Once you have an overview of your entire portfolio, it becomes much easier to prioritize preventative maintenance and avoid using most of your time staying on top of emergencies and reactive work.
Tip #3: Implement a preventative maintenance program
The most effective tool against deferred maintenance is having a dedicated preventative maintenance plan. Preventative maintenance focuses on inspections and routine tasks that are done before an issue or failure arises. Have a solid preventative maintenance plan can help decrease the number of projects that get moved into the backlog due to a lack of resources or funding. Implementing such a plan also grants you more control over where your maintenance budget is being spent and can extend the life of your entire portfolio while saving your money over the life of the roof.
Conclusion
Deferred maintenance carries a high price tag. Waiting for leaks and other deficiencies to make themselves evident before taking necessary action will always be more expensive and harder to plan for and more expensive than taking a proactive stance with your repairs and maintenance. If you are considered starting a preventative maintenance program, contact the professionals at RoofConnect today! RoofConnect has experts that can answer all of your questions and help you get started today. Give RoofConnect a call @ 877.942.5613 or visit https://www.roofconnect.com/roof-asset-management/
