The challenge of maintenance

The concept of maintenance is straightforward but the practice of maintenance is a complex activity. What can be achieved is a working balance between conflicting demands and resources which are brought to bear on maintenance and planned maintenance in particular.

Maintenance for an organisation or building may be considered under 3 aspects:

• strategic;
• technical; and
• managerial.

There will always be overlap between these aspects, each impinging and influencing each other.

The distinction between technical and managerial may be somewhat artificial. For instance:

• collecting data and producing a maintenance plan may be regarded as technical;
• using the plan to allocate resources and instigate maintenance work may be regarded as managerial;
• the organisation involved to collect the data and decide what data to collect would be a managerial task.

The key issue is that the separate parts need to work together to achieve the best maintenance service and maintenance outputs. 

Strategic issues

Maintenance of buildings, components, services and spaces is considered in the broader context of the aims and objectives of the organisation. Typically the strategic view positions maintenance in the business plan. This may be reflected in:

• a statement on how maintenance can meet the core business objectives or how it can add value to the building or the activities taking place within it;
• the allocation of resources, both financial and personnel;
• whether to outsource or use in-house staff to manage and carry out maintenance;
• the setting of financial targets or limits;
• the allocation of responsibility for maintenance activities with respect to items such as inspections, cleaning, fabric components, services components, equipment, external works and landscaping;
• the determination in broad terms of the priorities and standards for maintenance;
• the determination of the ratio between planned and responsive maintenance;
• benchmarking criteria;
• the setting of the time-frame within which maintenance options are considered; and/or
• the definition of the policy and legislative influences on maintenance.

The strategic issues relating to maintenance determine the aims and objectives. Planned maintenance is just one aspect of an overall maintenance strategy.

Technical issues

Technical issues relate to the physical aspects of the items which are maintained:

• knowledge about buildings, structure, components, materials;
• the nature of component failure, causes and remedies;
• factors which influence maintenance; and
• the specification of maintenance work.

Managerial issues

It may be important to distinguish the management directly and inextricably linked with maintenance activities from broader management issues. Invariably there will be overlap and clear distinctions may not be possible as information from the implementation of maintenance work will inform broader management issues and responsibilities.

Managerial issues relating directly to planning and carrying out maintenance work may include:

• organising information to inform planned maintenance, such as condition surveys;
• determining health and safely and legislative demands applicable to the building;
• procuring and supervising maintenance work;
• managing budgets and costing;
• liaison with occupiers before, during and after maintenance work; and
• keeping up to date maintenance plans, building log books and health and safety files.

Broader management issues may include:

• preparing strategic plans and policies;
• developing a maintenance plan; and
• managing budgets and costing as part of the overall organisation.

These lists are not exhaustive but give a flavour of the type of work and responsibilities involved.

The key technical and management issues relating to planned maintenance are developed in more detail in Maintenance issues.