Deferred Maintenance: The Hidden Costs for Aging Buildings
Deferred maintenance is the act of delaying critical preventative maintenance, upgrades, and repairs on property and equipment, often at a great cost to the property owner. Schools and commercial real estate (CRE) managers often try to balance their budgets by postponing necessary repairs and routine upkeep. Unfortunately, saving money in the near term by pushing off these expenses can result in much higher long-term costs.
While advance capital planning is ideal, schools and CREs facing deferred maintenance due to budget constraints can still mitigate losses by establishing a reliable monitoring system. Rather than risking costly operational challenges for your school or CRE property, incorporate continuous building intelligence like Attune to prioritize repairs and bring your property back up to standard.
Why Deferred Maintenance Gets More Expensive Over Time
When operations fail to conduct building upgrades and maintenance on time, the cost to complete these activities invariably increases. Damaged or poorly maintained building components require more work the longer they are left to degrade. Worse, emergency repairs become more likely as building infrastructure ages, meaning even higher costs for last-minute and rush fixes. At the same time, other maintenance and repair concerns arise, creating an insurmountable facility management backlog.
Deferred Maintenance Example
For instance, say a school building is due for a roof replacement, a hefty project with a price tag anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 or more. Their annual budget is restricted, and they have other expenses to cover. So, the district postpones the roof replacement for five years.
During that time, construction supply costs continue to increase at the current rate, boosting the cost for the same installation by almost 10% per year. While the district waits five years, the roofing system continues to degrade, allowing water to leak into the sub-roof, damaging the insulation, and compromising structural beams.
While waiting for repairs, the school falls into an expensive cycle of whack-a-mole, fixing leaks, electrical shorts, and other complications as they arise, with no real long-term benefit. By the time they reach the five-year mark, the school district has not only a roof replacement but also higher supply costs and additional water damage remediation. They may have to cover expensive mold removal and even structural repairs. If the water damage is bad enough, the facility may be uninhabitable during repairs, meaning more financial outlay for teaching space.
Preventative Maintenance vs Deferred Maintenance
Deferred maintenance can also refer to failed preventative maintenance, not just capital asset replacement. For instance, if a building facilitator fails to ensure regular maintenance for the HVAC system, components may rust or degrade, causing an unexpected HVAC failure down the line.
Instead of detecting a small issue and repairing it immediately, the problem is allowed to grow. Even if the damaged component doesn’t create problems with other parts of the system, the building owner pays for it with higher electricity usage and more expensive repairs. In addition, lack of preventative maintenance shortens the HVAC lifecycle, creating even more expense in the long term. Even when you think you’re saving money, the ROI of proactive maintenance will always outweigh the costs of a building maintenance backlog.
Why Visibility Matters More Than Bigger Maintenance Budgets
You might think that the solution to your deferred maintenance challenge is a bigger budget. However, building health is more about timing than money. In fact, with timely facility asset monitoring of your building’s systems and equipment, you can actually save money, instead of spending more.
Real-time data about your building’s critical systems, from roof repairs to your HVAC lifecycle can keep your building healthy for less. The key to a successful strategy is getting the right data with insights that facilitate prompt action.
Prioritizing Repairs Using Building Intelligence
Facilities teams with access to real-time building systems data don’t have to guess at which repair or maintenance expense is most important. They have the information they need to make informed decisions, allowing teams to prioritize operational expenses.
Data on routine maintenance and repairs keeps you up to date on each system’s performance. When you can access information about all your building systems from one centralized location, you can quickly identify the highest-risk assets before they fail. Visibility also helps you make plans for capital spending, while the data you gather supports your budget requests with actionable insights.
Remote Monitoring for Streamlined Maintenance
Centralized monitoring is especially useful for distributed building portfolios. Assessing your liabilities and obligations across all building systems helps you put your resources where they’re needed most. Lean maintenance becomes easy when you can identify your highest risks and address them immediately.
Whether you’re managing a single large facility or a broad portfolio, you need a building intelligence platform with more than just IoT sensors. Attune offers cutting-edge monitoring with integrated building analytics to gather data and develop usable insights, so you can take action to protect your assets.
How Attune Helps Teams Move From Reactive Maintenance to Proactive Operations
When you’re trying to budget for long term reserve expenses, Attune’s continuous building monitoring and intelligence platform provides the critical visibility you need to plan ahead. Instead of reacting to failed equipment and structural issues, you can proactively plan maintenance and repairs on your schedule.
With early warnings, you can order components and plan your repairs when issues do arise. That means you don’t have to triage disastrous failures or pay rush fees for parts and labor.
Continuous Monitoring Creates Long-Term Operational Resilience
Keep your CRE and education building systems operating efficiently with continuous asset condition monitoring by Attune. Our building IoT systems and analytics monitor your energy usage to detect problems before they become expensive failures. In addition, we track your equipment life, maintenance schedules, and repairs, so you can create a budgetary plan for upgrades and replacements.
Reach out today to schedule a demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is deferred maintenance?
Deferred maintenance is the practice of delaying routine maintenance and repairs, usually to save money in the short term.
What is the 30:1 rule?
The 30:1 rule refers to the estimated return on investment (ROI) for predictive maintenance over reactive maintenance and repair costs. In essence, for every dollar invested in building monitoring and insights, the organization saves $30 that would have been spent on reduced equipment life, emergency repairs, and downtime.
How do you calculate deferred maintenance?
You calculate deferred maintenance by adding together the cash value of the following:
Immediate and past-due repairs
Routine maintenance deficiencies
Cost of labor and products to complete past and current repairs and maintenance
Short-term capital to replace systems reaching end of service within 1-5 years
How does building monitoring reduce deferred maintenance?
Building monitoring reduces deferred maintenance by tracking building assets and environment in real time. Continuous monitoring allows facilitators to schedule maintenance and repairs proactively before wear and tear issues become costly problems.
