How PPM can inform strategic approach to assets

Building maintenance is often perceived by property professionals and their clients as, at best, mundane. Yet it is essential.

It involves keeping, restoring or improving a building to an accepted standard, including its services, fabric, finishes, facilities and surrounding parts. Approaches to such maintenance can be categorised as being emergency, reactive or planned.

Emergency and reactive maintenance are both unplanned.

The former is where unexpected failures or breakdowns necessitate immediate repairs to building fabric or services plant, which can cause disruption or jeopardise health and safety. The latter meanwhile is where components are repaired or replaced when they fail or show signs of failure.

Poorly maintained buildings and infrastructure not only affect occupants and users but can also pose safety risks; there is no shortage of instances where injuries or fatalities have been a direct result of substandard property maintenance.

Indeed, RICS commissioned the Planned preventative maintenance global professional standard, after a member of the public was fatally injured by a heavy wooden panel, which fell from a shopping centre in Wolverhampton during Storm Doris in 2017. A subsequent investigation found that it had become detached because it had not been properly maintained.

With the continued development of urban areas and infrastructure around the world, a strategic shift to planned preventative maintenance (PPM) can not only improve safety but offer other benefits for owners, occupiers and the surrounding environment.

PPM reports are essential to this process, to achieve a properly considered and coordinated strategy.

Reports should be prepared by independent experts, who will be thorough and detailed, helping property managers to justify future maintenance works – and resulting service charge expenditure – to tenants.

They will include comprehensive cost estimates for maintenance on each maintainable component over the specified period, informing decisions about the current and future operation of the asset.

Planned maintenance is often only considered for existing assets during operation; however, PPM reports can provide significant value throughout the whole life cycle. They enhance the design and operation of buildings, and lead to better informed management, occupational and investment decisions.

By assessing future maintenance costs and the life expectancy of component parts, these reports can also inform decisions about whether to demolish or repurpose a building. Properly maintained buildings will have a longer useful life, hence delaying potential demolition.

Meanwhile, reports allow asset, property and facilities managers to demonstrate a considered approach to service charge or sinking fund expenditure, helping identify and prioritise works and spread the associated costs over coming years in a coordinated manner.

They can also schedule spending in line with lease expiry dates, to help landlords plan expenditure that is properly recoverable under service charges.

Furthermore, PPM reports can ensure compliance with relevant statute and enable proactive planning for future changes in legislation. They mean managers can consider and plan for future improvements, in line with their clients' environmental, social and governance (ESG) strategies.

Consistent with best practice, managers can demonstrate a professional, proactive approach that reduces the risk of injuries or fatalities and associated liabilities from poorly maintained buildings. They can thus minimise costs of unchecked deterioration and damage due to fabric or building services failure resulting from reactive maintenance.

Developing a whole-life cost strategy for the asset based on this will help their professional property team to consider future maintenance needs, encouraging them to select no- or low-maintenance components, which can reduce costs and extend the building's lifespan.

It also means owners can identify and meet the manufacturers' requirements in material and services equipment warranties for new buildings, something which is often overlooked.

PPM will, therefore, help maintain capital and rental values, ensuring the asset is fit for sale should the owner choose to dispose of it, or improve its competitiveness in the local lettings market.

The future maintenance cost data that owners obtain from reports can also inform their decisions on whether to refurbish, demolish or redevelop assets, and help them align maintenance and ESG strategies and enhance sustainability.

Indeed, PPM should be considered an essential and sustainable activity, providing a road map for maintaining fabric and services as well as enhancing building longevity, operation, safety, sustainability and value.