Regular maintenance is something we do for our own personal lives and households every day, from mowing the grass to getting our hair cut, so it makes sense that these regular maintenance tasks should be kept up in commercial buildings. Imagine not brushing your teeth for months or leaving the same oil in your car for years. You probably wouldn’t do that – and if you do, you might end up with some serious and expensive issues to address. Performing regular building maintenance is similar. It may seem tedious at times but it ensures that your building’s systems are providing the safety, comfort, and health they are designed to.
While the cost of building maintenance can seem high, and even superfluous when building’s appear to be running smoothly, it is imperative to keep up with the maintenance to identify potential failures and proactively review systems and equipment. Over time building’s systems tend to run less effectively due to natural causes such as daily wear and tear and strain caused by factors such as climate. Not all issues are recognized day to day, and they tend to result in failures that are costly and can create dangerous and unhealthy environments for the building’s occupants.
Research from our industry partners shows that regular maintenance can:
- Cut unexpected breakdowns by 70-75%
- Reduce downtime by 35-45%
- Lower equipment repairs and maintenance costs by 25-30%
- Reduce energy consumption by 5-20%
The scope of building maintenance ranges from simple daily checklists, like reviewing the building automation and security systems trends and logs, to periodic filter and belt changes, to robust yearly check outs of the mechanical components. Spending time performing the factory recommended maintenance tasks and ensuring that your building’s technologies are up to date – such as renewing licenses and updating software - can help ensure that your building’s systems are working properly and can identify potential issues before they become costly repairs.
Over the past 16 months, offices have not had as many occupants inside, and in many cases regular maintenance has not occurred as robustly as it would have in the past. Moving forward as people return to offices and our world begins to reopen, it is important to remember and invest in regular maintenance to ensure the safety, health, and comfort of the occupants both now, and in the future. Sometimes building operations professionals don’t know where to begin, or what they should do to determine what maintenance needs to be performed on their buildings. The questions below provide a starting point:
- Determine what capacity you have internally as well as your company’s budget for both scheduled maintenance and if equipment breaks or emergency repair is required.
- Gather documentation about what systems and equipment your building has.
- Talk to experts like LONG to determine what equipment and systems should have regular expert scheduled maintenance, and what can be completed internally.
- Keep up on the maintenance and track savings.
If you have any questions about how regular maintenance can extend the life of your building’s equipment and systems, of if you would like help putting together a maintenance plan please contact LONG.
