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.
For consideration, the graphic below compares the difference in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when a facility’s maintenance is handled reactively, compared to that of using proactively planned maintenance over a facility’s lifetime.
Cooperative Purchasing Can Help
Save Time
There are many steps involved in running a competitive bidding process (market research, writing and advertising bid solicitations, receiving and evaluating proposals, contract negotiation), as a result, this process can typically take anywhere between 6 to 24 months. When you use a cooperative contract, the cooperative agency will have already completed the solicitation process, providing a ready-to-go contract. This reduces the amount of time your purchasing staff needs to spend on new solicitations or generating new contracts.
Save $$$
Cooperative purchasing can also help smaller to mid-size jurisdictions or government agencies that are unable to purchase products or services in large quantities. If those agencies utilize a cooperative contract and pool their demand with other entities, they can often secure better pricing that they would be able to on their own.
Use Local Contractors
While cooperative contracts awarded at a national level, the actual work is performed locally. There may be contractors and subcontractors in your community who can handle your agency maintenance needs, while still working within a cooperative contract.
Got Questions? RoofConnect Has Answers
RoofConnect has contracted with several Cooperatives to provide roofing services to all public entities. If deferred maintenance is an issue, please contact us today to find out more about cooperative purchasing and how to get the most value from your budget for the fiscal year. Call 877.942.5613
