Commercial property: How to avoid nasty surprises with a planned preventative maintenence schedule

Maintaining commercial buildings can be an expensive and complicated task for those responsible.

Whether you are an owner occupier, landlord, an asset manager or a tenant, the most efficient method of managing this process is to have a planned preventative maintenance (PPM) schedule in place for each property, which should help avoid any nasty surprises.

The purposes of PPM schedules are wide ranging but the three main benefits are for costs, management oversight and legislative compliance.

Creating a PPM schedule will avoid costly reactive repairs as a result of a sudden breakdown of a part of a building. Having one in place will also provide guidance on maintenance cycles to achieve maximum value and prolong the life of each building element.

Landlords and managing agents need to determine a sensible financial budget to plan for capital or service charge expenditure, and when negotiating service charge rates and caps during a lease, a PPM will demonstrate the basis for these charges.

It will help enable an owner to maintain a building’s value and a PPM is usually an essential part of due diligence information in a sale or purchase.

Gaining an accurate oversight of all the component parts of a building is complicated, but the benefits considerably outweigh the pain.

A PPM will greatly assist an asset manager to meet their obligations under health and safety, environmental and other legislation by giving them a tool to identify requirements and set out best practice for implementation.

And a PPM can also be useful for tenants who are subject to full repairing and insuring leases, so that they can mitigate any potential claim for dilapidations at the end of their lease.

However, some schedules prove more complicated than others.

An owner-occupier client recently instructed Galbraith’s building surveying team to prepare a PPM schedule for a traditionally constructed roof in Edinburgh’s Old Town conservation area.

A-listed and the scope of the PPM included a detailed inspection of the roof and identification of when and where repairs will be required – not just immediately, but over the next ten years.

The report helped the client to budget for the outstanding repairs and also established the benefit of a single larger construction project compared with more regularly scheduled smaller repairs – vital when scaffolding and access considerations have to be factored in.

Another investment client commissioned a whole portfolio review of multi-let office buildings.

Working with the client’s asset manager, Galbraith formulated a reporting template and structure to help identify the outstanding maintenance at each property and when and where larger cost expenditure was going to be required.

We also assisted them in formulating an improved strategy to manage and agree service charge caps at the various buildings in the portfolio.

With this full review, we were able to help the client identify management requirements to inform their investment decisions.

A PPM is an effective and efficient tool to help manage assets, both now and also for the future.

James Taylor is a building surveyor with Galbraith