Building Maintenance

Keeping residential and commercial properties safe and livable.

What is building maintenance management?

Without proper maintenance, buildings become unsafe and unlivable. Building maintenance refers to activities performed to keep residential and commercial properties in a safe, functional, and comfortable condition. This includes tasks such as cleaning, landscaping, and electrical system maintenance.

Much of property maintenance management consists of behind-the-scenes work: for example, removing trash, replacing light bulbs, and cleaning common areas. Building maintenance management is a process for controlling maintenance resources and activities required to preserve, repair, or replace assets within a residential or commercial facility.

When it comes to residential properties such as apartment buildings, maintenance management also consists of fulfilling work order requests from tenants, preparing vacant units for occupancy, water-proofing the building, and updating electrical appliances.

Who is in charge of building maintenance?

Building maintenance tasks are carried out by a team of professionals, each one with a specific function:

Janitors – Custodians are responsible for maintaining the cleanliness of a built environment. They mop floors, vacuum carpets, clean bathrooms, wash windows, and more.

Maintenance technicians – Technicians perform the maintenance, inspections, and repair of building systems including HVAC, electrical, and water systems. These tasks are typically assigned by work orders.

Maintenance supervisors – Supervisors plan, assign and manage a team of maintenance workers based on incoming work order requests. When assigning work orders, they take into consideration the existing maintenance backlog as well as the maintenance department’s short- and long-term objectives. They then prioritize the maintenance department’s work for the day or week.

Maintenance planners – Maintenance planners are responsible for coordinating all plannable maintenance work on their premises. These professionals are usually found at large manufacturing facilities but may be in charge of building maintenance as well.

Here’s why building maintenance is important

1. Safety

A poorly maintained building is a safety hazard. Corrosion from the elements, wear and tear from use are just a few reasons why electrical and structural systems will all need
maintenance, repair, and/or replacement eventually. Cutting costs or treating maintenance as an afterthought can create a hazardous situation for your employees or tenants.

2. Saving money

Keeping up with maintenance projects is much less expensive than executing an emergency repair. Budgeting for regular upkeep is much easier than having to spend a large amount all at once in the event of an emergency. Here are some strategies for saving money on building maintenance:

Schedule preventive maintenance

Preventive maintenance is a type of scheduled maintenance that is performed regularly on a piece of equipment regardless of whether or not it has failed. This is done to prevent unexpected equipment malfunctions or emergency situations that may endanger people’s lives or interrupt business-as-usual. For some organizations, preventive maintenance constitutes 90% of all maintenance activities.

Maximize the building’s energy efficiency

Commercial buildings require a lot of energy to heat and cool. If the building is not optimized for energy efficiency, consider retrofitting windows, HVAC systems, ventilation systems, and roofing that is designed for better insulation. However, making a building more energy-efficient doesn’t always require a huge investment. Routine maintenance tasks such as cleaning air ducts, changing air filters regularly, and using sealant to prevent HVAC leaks reduce overall energy consumption.

You can also economize on the building’s energy use with low-budget fixes such as replacing tungsten light bulbs with LEDs, choosing better window treatments, and using Energy Star-rated appliances.

Use a CMMS to track asset lifecycle

Tracking asset lifecycle is the only way to determine if your current maintenance plan is working. Pay attention to failure metrics including Mean Time To Failure (MTTF) and Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) as these indicate whether your assets are being over- or under-maintained.

5. Functionality

Routine maintenance is essential to building functionality—taps that run when you switch them on, a roof that doesn’t leak, and an HVAC system that supplies the building with cool air during the summer months.

6. Compliance

The International Property Maintenance Code (IPMC) establishes the minimum requirements for the maintenance of existing buildings. Building managers have to keep up with the maintenance of all systems per code and regulatory requirements including the WCB Occupational Health and Safety Regulations.

Examples of building maintenance

1. Cleaning common areas, trash removal, replacing lightbulbs, pest control, appliance repair

2. Weatherproofing the building ahead of a major weather event or removing snow

3. Maintaining electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems to ensure climate control and electricity/water access

4. Outdoor property maintenance including landscaping, lawn care, and sprinkler management

5. Checking and replacing fire extinguishers, smoke detectors, etc.

6. Maintaining an aesthetically pleasing environment— eg: painting fences, trimming hedges, removing litter