Introduction

There is no doubt that the condition

and quality of buildings are reflected in
public pride or indifference, the level
of prosperity, and the social values
and behaviour prevalent in the area.
Dilapidated and unhealthy buildings in
a decaying environment, as evidenced
in many city centres, depress the
quality of life and in some measure
may be responsible for the antisocial
behaviour which manifests itself from time
to time in many urban areas. Better
maintenance standards and policies may
well improve the existing stock of
buildings, helping to improve social
conditions and perhaps reducing some of
these behavioural problems.
Maintenance decisions are still in many
cases based on expediency. There is a
lack of precise knowledge of the benefits
that can accrue from a well-designed
maintenance policy, and how such a
policy can help to prevent the ad hoc and
unrelated compromises between the
physical needs of the building and the
availability of finance. The value of
buildings and works accounts for some 66
percent of the nation’s capital stock,
which is a vital factor in the production of
new wealth, and the preservation of the
value and utility of these buildings is
essential to the continuing economic
development of the country.
Definitions
As with many topics, interpretation can be
confusing, but in the case of maintenance
there are two British Standards from
which to establish a common definition of
the term ‘maintenance’.
BS 8210 (1986) – Guide to Building
Maintenance Management
Describes ‘building maintenance’ as work
other than daily and routine cleaning,
necessary to maintain the performance of
the building fabric and its services.
BS 3811 (1984) – Glossary of
Maintenance Management Terms in
Terotechnology
Defines ‘maintenance’ as the combination
of all technical and associated
administrative action intended to retain an
item in, or restore it to, a state in which it
can perform its required function.
Preventive maintenance
Building maintenance may be work
carried out in anticipation of failure, or
work carried out after failure.
It is the first of these that is referred to
as preventive maintenance.
In many cases, preventive
maintenance is further categorised
into ‘planned maintenance’ and
‘planned preventive maintenance’.
These terms are defined as:
‘Maintenance carried out at
predetermined intervals, or to other
prescribed criteria, and intended to
reduce the likelihood of an item not
meeting an acceptable condition.’
 Planned or scheduled
maintenance
The advantages of a good planned system for maintenance
are:

1. A more efficient service can be provided.

2. There will be less interference with the normal use of the
building as the maintenance can be carried out at most suitable
times (eg holiday shutdown times).
3. Defects are likely to be detected sooner than with an ad hoc
system. In general it is assumed that the longer a defect is left
before rectification, the greater will be the inconvenience, and
often the greater the cost of remedying the defect.
4. There may be less risk to persons, furniture, fittings etc, the
sooner a defect is rectified.
5. There will be fewer crisis jobs and accidents.
6. Resources in the maintenance department can be more fully utilised
and materials ordered and obtained in advance.
7. Specialist subcontractors etc can be booked in advance.
8. Better organisation and teamwork within the maintenance
department, thereby improving morale and reducing cost.
9. Better records will result in improved financial forecasting and this
will result in more realistic budgets.

Scheduled maintenance systems involve planning of the workload of

the maintenance organisation in advance. In order to do this it is
necessary to have sufficient information to anticipate maintenance
requirements and problems likely to arise in the future. Part of the
system works on the principle that it can be assumed that materials
under given conditions will deteriorate at a more or less constant
rate, so that cyclical renewals will be necessary. If the cycle is fairly
short, say daily, weekly, monthly, or even six monthly, this may be
regarded as routine maintenance, whereas cycles of three years or
more may be described as infrequent cycles. Between these two
figures organisations may classify the cycles differently for internal
planning or budgeting purposes. An example of routine maintenance
would be the oiling and greasing of some moving parts of fans in an
air-conditioning system, while painting externally forms one of the
infrequent cycles.

Scheduled maintenance includes provision for regular inspection of

the various elements forming the building in order that any defects
can be noted and subsequently rectified. In addition, signs that a
material or piece of equipment is likely to fail in the near future can
also be noted and precautions taken to reduce the likelihood of
failure.
Information requirements
To plan and manage maintenance effectively requires a great
deal of information. Much of the information which is
collected is also suitable for many other purposes. It may be
of value to the client in forming his general policy and to his
estate management. The following suggests the minimum
information that will be required:

1. Estate records. The location of the building stock, its use, its
size, its age, its capital value and construction and services it
contains. Plans and drawings are a useful part of the estate
records and these may include site plans clearly showing
boundaries and external services, together with appropriate
floor plans. Drawings of any fire safety measures are also
useful.

2. M aintenance po lic y . C lient’s polic y regarding his

 requirements for the stock.

3. Performance requirements. The performances required from the

building stock and its services; eg floor loading, internal
environmental, lifts and similar equipment.

4. Performance assessment. An assessment of how well the buildings

and services satisfy the current performance requirements.

5. Maintenance standards. The standard of maintenance required,

including any statutory or legal requirements.

6. Condition survey. This should include an assessment of the extent

to which the building and its services satisfy the maintenance
standards.
 Maintenance policy
Before maintenance programmes can be prepared, a policy
has to be agreed between the client and the manager of the
maintenance department to provide a framework within which
the manager can work. To enable such a policy to be
prepared, there are several basic points that the client should
consider, notably:

l The length of time that the

buildings will need to
provide their present use,
and whether, so that they
may serve their purpose
better during this period,
the buildings will need to
be upgraded.

l Can an alternative use be

 found when the building’s
present use expires, and what
effects might any conversion
have upon the buildings and
their services?

l What will be the likely life

of the buildings and the
likely date when the buildings
will be disposed of or
demolished?

Any or all of these decisions may of course be affected by the form

and conditions of tenure under which the property is held by the
client and any other legal or planning constraints that may exist.

If the client can be persuaded to take these decisions, it will enable

proper consideration to be given to the life cycle requirements of the
buildings and their services.

The maintenance policy should therefore deal with the following

points:

l The life requirements of the

buildings and their fittings and
services. Note there will be
different life cycle
requirements for the building
fabric, partitions, fittings,
services etc, and these
requirements will, to some
degree, be determined by the
physical performance required
for the building and its
services.

l The standard to which the

 building and its services are
to be maintained, ie the
degree to which the
maintenance requirements are
to exceed the standard
required purely to prevent
deterioration.

l The speed of reaction required

between defects occurring and
a repair being carried out.
Note that generally the
quicker the reaction
required, the more expensive
the operation to the client.

l How much money is the client

prepared to allocate to the
maintenance programme?

Note that besides the statutory requirement in a maintenance

programme arising from Acts of Parliament and subsequent orders,
legal requirements from covenants in leases and from easements,
wayleaves and other rights over property will have to be dealt with.
 User philosophies
The designer, in order to reduce the user costs of the building,
should have some knowledge of the user’s proposed
maintenance systems. This will involve some knowledge of
the proposed maintenance policy as well as more detailed
knowledge of the numbers and skills of the proposed
maintenance staff and the equipment with which they are
likely to be provided. A large, direct labour staff may require
space within the building for workshops. Space will also be
required for the storage of spares etc (eg lamps, paints).
Cleaning staff will require space for the storage of cleaning
materials and these should be so spaced out round the
building that unproductive movement time collecting and
returning equipment is kept to an economic minimum.
Adequate power points should be provided particularly in
corridors and on staircases for the proposed cleaning
equipment to be used, without excessive lengths of cable
 being necessary.

The maintenance policy of the user will depend upon a number of

different factors.

1 Financial
The amount of money spent on maintenance will depend upon the
priority given to this item. In the case of private commercial
organisations, the profitability of the firm at a particular point in
time or its anticipated profitability may influence the amount
allocated to maintenance. The state of the cash flow and the
demands for capital expenditure may affect the maintenance budget
allowance. The organisation’s policy may be to create a more or less
fixed maintenance budget for each year so that a large expenditure
on one item may reduce the amount available for other maintenance
during the period.

The effect of maintenance expenditure on the likely selling price of

the property may also influence the maintenance policy.

2 Occupational
The maintenance policy will to some extent depend upon the use of
the building. If the building is a hospital, then the effects of poor
maintenance of the structure and more particularly some of the
services may resulted in a major health hazard.

If the building is used to house valuable items (eg art gallery or

museum) or if it is used to store large quantities of goods which are
liable to deteriorate quickly (eg grain silos) then the maintenance
policy of the occupier is likely to be different from that of the
occupier of a building where damage to contents is likely to have
little financial affect.

The effect of maintenance expenditure on the environmental

conditions within the building and on the morale and efficiency of
 the staff may influence the maintenance policy of an organisation.

3 Age
It has been found from several surveys carried out on schools,
housing and government offices that the costs of maintenance tend
to increase with the age of the building. In the initial years of the
building’s life, maintenance is fairly high as there is a need to
correct major design faults and unpredictable inconveniences which
result from the way the building is being used. After about three or
four years these faults are likely to have been rectified as far as is
economically practicable and the building user costs will settle into a
more stable pattern. The annual maintenance costs on average tend
to increase about four times over a 30-year period. It has been
suggested that modern types of construction are likely to have higher
maintenance costs during their life cycle than similar buildings
erected using traditional forms of construction.

4 Prestige
An organisation may base its maintenance policy on considerations
of prestige and good public relations which the building can
enhance. In this case more attention may be paid to buildings or
parts of buildings which will be seen by the public. Staff morale
must not be neglected, however, so the level of decoration and repair
must be kept sufficiently high to maintain production efficiency.
Adequate environmental conditions for those using the building
must be provided and the level of maintenance will depend upon
what is regarded by the user as acceptable.

5 Legal
Government regulations and statutory requirements often set out
minimum standards for the condition of buildings (eg Public Health
Acts, Housing Acts, Health and Safety at Work Act). These are
specified in order to avoid health, fire and other hazards and depend
upon the use of the building. The designer must ensure that the
 building starts in a suitable state for the proposed use and can be
kept in that state at a reasonably economic cost.

6 Technical
The technical knowledge at the time the maintenance policy is
established and also the anticipated size, type and quality of the
available labour force, will influence policy decisions. As new
techniques and improved items of equipment become available,
attitudes towards maintenance are likely to change.

7 Organisational
Past experience of those in authority will influence policy decisions.
Executives who have been involved with successful, directly
employed maintenance teams may prefer to use them for most
maintenance work, whilst others, who have had unpleasant
experiences with this type of organisation may prefer to have a
policy with more of the work contracted out to specialist firms or
local contractors.

If the person directly responsible for the maintenance section has a

real interest in maintenance and is not just involved with it as an
adjunct to some other job which he regards as more important, then
he is likely to bring greater pressure to bear on his colleagues when
maintenance is discussed.
 How important is building maintenance?
The following schedule shows a split of the major costs-in-use
per annum for a typical non-domestic building:

1. Energy 15–45%

2. Rates 5–45%

3. Cleaning 5–40%
4. Maintenance 7–30%

5. Insurances 2–20%

6. Security and management 0–10%

These figures indicate that the costs of maintenance are

generally less than costs for lighting and heating, or for
cleaning and rates. The proportions will obviously vary with
the type of building and its use. In many property management
systems, energy and cleaning will fall under the heading of general
maintenance.

It has been suggested that the national level of expenditure on

building maintenance is far too high and, although a current concern
to many, the problem of over-expenditure is not altogether a recent
problem. In 1965 the government set up a committee to evaluate and
counter the then present situation, but it does not seem to have
alleviated the problem.

In many cases the evidence gained from detailed research suggests

that maintenance is generally carried out as a series of ad hoc and
unrelated compromises between the physical needs of a building and
the availability of finance.

Building maintenance is often quoted as an activity of primary

importance; many buildings nevertheless remain under-maintained
and thus a substantial proportion of the national building stock is
currently in danger of deteriorating beyond the economic level of
repair.

How then do we overcome these problems? One solution is by fully

controlling all maintenance.
 Annual budget
The annual budget which should be based on a maintenance
programme should be broken down into:

l Obligatory costs: ie those

costs incurred owing to
statutory requirements or as
a result of irrevocable
decisions made previously.

l Essential costs: ie those costs

which must be incurred if
the minimum acceptable
condition of the buildings is
to be maintained, or if
alterations are to be made
to enable the proposed
functions of the organisation
 to be carried out.

l Desirable costs: these costs are

those which will only be
incurred if the level of
profit is high, or if finance
becomes available from other
sources.

The budget will usually separate out the cost of managing and the
cost of running the maintenance department.

The method used for classifying maintenance cost may be functional

groups or elements, or a mixture of spaces and functional elements.

The method used for classifying operating and occupational costs is likely
to be different however. In the case of operating costs, several utility
service elements may use the same source of energy (eg electricity) and it
may be difficult to separate the various uses to which the energy is put.
The energy costs might therefore be classified under the different types
rather than the use. Cleaning costs will not be easily separated into the
same classification as that used for maintenance so that the breakdown
will depend upon the information available.
Controlling maintenance
Establishing full control of all buildings and maintenance
includes not only the period during occupation, but also an
involvement at the design stage and then throughout the life of
the building.

Controlling maintenance at the design stage

Inefficient designs, poor workmanship and inadequate
specifications can result in faults which subsequently are
difficult and expensive to diagnose and remedy.

The following chart taken from Reginald Lee’s Building

Maintenance Management outlines the role played by
maintenance during the total building proces.
How much consideration of future maintenance is given at the
design stage is likely to depend upon whether the person
commissioning the building will be the subsequent user of the
 property.

Where the developer is intending to sell or lease the property upon

completion, the project may well be geared to the speculative
market. In such circumstances it is common to find that the concept
of future maintenance is given a low priority, with very few
resources allocated during the design stage.

However, this philosophy may well change if low levels of

maintenance have a detrimental effect on the sale or rental value of
the property. Even where the client/developer becomes the user, it is
likely that the initial capital cost for the project and any subsequent
maintenance budgets will be drawn from different and unrelated
financial allocations. Such a policy exists in many large property
organisations where the original design of a building may be
restrained by a low capital budget. The result is often a cheaper
initial construction, which can later be heavily saturated by revenue
maintenance budgets for repair, maintenance and possibly
reconstruction works that have been made necessary.

This form of financial control is clearly a case of false economy. If a

building is designed to accommodate predictable future
maintenance, the running and maintenance costs in later years (LCC
– ‘life cycle costs’) can be dramatically reduced. Research into
maintenance costs of a building shows that such a commitment can
exceed 10 times that of the original construction costs, during the
life of the building.

Both new construction and maintenance works are subjected to some

form of financial restraint and controls. If this is the case, then those
involved at the design stage should attempt to establish a detailed
analysis of the life cycle costs of a building and other alternative
design solutions.

The theory of life cycle costing suggests that any decisions on the design
and acquisition of a building should include the long-term maintenance
and running costs throughout the expected life of the building.
When an organisation sets a level for
maintenance it is likely to vary the
level for individual buildings and for
the organisation as a whole. An
acceptable level is that which satisfies
the needs of the user for the
immediate and short-term future.
Property may be allowed to fall below
the design level of condition before
maintenance is carried out but there
will be a minimum level of
acceptability.
In addition to the desirable condition
changing owing to changes in taste,
technical advances etc, so may the
minimum acceptable level of condition
change with time and organisation
policy. The maintenance work will not
always be carried out when the minimum
accepted level is reached but may be
performed at any time to improve the
condition even if it does not bring it back
up to the design level.
A new standard called the improved or
altered design level may be drawn on
the above graph to indicate the level
of condition to which the building was
redesignated after improvements.
In some organisations improvements, alterations and minor
capital works may be included under the heading of
maintenance. This is usually done because the department
responsible for these works is the same as that responsible for
maintenance. Improvements and alterations may have an
effect on the maintenance requirements of the existing
building.

Some authorities use the terms avoidable and unavoidable

maintenance – the former referring to items which have been
caused by bad design details, by the use of unsuitable
materials or bad workmanship, either initially or in
subsequent repairs, or by deliberate maltreatment on the part
of the user (eg placing high temperature articles on surfaces
such as vinyl floors). Unavoidable maintenance is that caused
by fair wear and tear, accident or factors outside the users’
control.

Preventive maintenance is work which is carried out before an

 element has failed with the intention of preventing or considerably
reducing the chances of failure.

Corrective maintenance is work which is carried out after an element

has failed in order to reduce the effects of the failure and where
possible restore the element to its original state or to a state which is
acceptable.

The aims of the maintenance organisation should be to provide an

efficient service at an economic cost. This will involve reducing the
delay in dealing with faults, preventing as far as is practical the
faults occurring, keeping to a minimum the number of inadequate
repairs or inefficient renewals, and generally avoiding unnecessary
expenditure.

Delays in dealing with faults may arise because of:

l An inadequate communication
system.
l A priority system.
l Lack of resources.
l Difficulty in obtaining
materials.
l Inadequate planning of the
stock held.
l Insufficient money available
either because of poor
economic circumstances or bad
planning.

Most delays could be reduced by good management and efficient

planning. Delay in dealing with a fault may involve the organisation
in much higher costs when the work is executed than if there had
been no delay. Faults can be avoided by anticipating problems and
providing a regular and efficient system of inspection of the building
elements.
Good supervision and a record system which enables checks on
when, by whom, and how the work is done are necessary to avoid
poor workmanship. The causes of failures and the correct remedies
must be found before efficient instructions can be given to
operatives carrying out the work. The instructions must be written
clearly so that there is no ambiguity about where the work is to be
carried out, what is to be done and the materials that are to be used.
The inspection and supervisory staff must therefore be of such a
calibre that they are capable of performing these duties adequately.
A thorough technical knowledge of materials and their properties is
essential in addition to the ability to communicate with and control
staff.

Unnecessary maintenance expenditure can result from a variety of

causes, most of which are the result of poor technical knowledge or
poor management, particularly with regard to planning. The
materials used may be of a higher quality than the job requires as a
result of either lack of knowledge on the part of the specifier or
because of an overcautious nature. Owing to insufficient
investigation a higher price may be paid for a component or material
than is necessary.

In order that a maintenance organisation may carry out its aims it is

necessary to have adequate staff of the right quality and there must
be adequate planning to ensure that maintenance tasks can be carried
out efficiently and economically. Before any planned system is
implemented it must have the approval of the senior management of
the whole organisation and it must be established that sufficient
finances will be made available. Maintenance is often regarded as
the ‘Cinderella’ department in organisations so that if there is a
shortage of finances, maintenance items may be deferred before cuts
are made in other areas. Any system proposed should be as simple
as practicable and must include an element of flexibility.

The operatives in a maintenance department will generally need to

be more versatile than the same trades employed in new work.
Improvisation may sometimes be necessary in order to keep the
building safe and functional until new parts can be ordered or
permanent work carried out. Where it is not possible to purchase
items because they are no longer in normal production, it may be
necessary to manufacture the item. In order to be able to anticipate
possible future failures the operative may require keener senses than
other tradesmen.