Maintaining costs

Citation

(1999), "Maintaining costs", Property Management, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.1999.11317bab.008

Maintaining costs

Maintaining costs

Estimates of average annual maintenance costs for over 40 common types of building are included in the latest BMI review of maintenance costs.

The costs provide a source of information for long-term budgeting and benchmarking of performance.

Figure 1 shows the results for some of the buildings in the report. For example, the average annual maintenance expenditure for sports centres is £1700/100m2, consisting of £200 for redecorations, £700 for fabric maintenance and £800 for services maintenance.

Figure 1.Average annual maintenance costs £/100m² at 1998 prices.

The estimates are based on a survey of published data and unpublished BMI studies.

Commenting on this new study, Joe Martin of BMI stated that "the only accurate way to forecast maintenance expenditure on a particular building over a particular period is to carry out a detailed condition survey and prepare a detailed maintenance cost plan for the remaining life of the building. However, these BMI estimates provide a unique source of advice on the general levels of maintenance expenditure".

Mr Martin went on to say that "with the renewed focus on the performance of buildings following the Egan Report, this information will prove invaluable as a benchmark for both new and existing buildings".

The costs include all planned and reactive maintenance including internal and external decorations, fabric maintenance and services.

The information in the study generally relates to historic expenditure and for some organisations, particularly those in the public sector, reflects how much they have been allowed to spend within their budgeting constraints, rather than the sums they felt appropriate to spend on their buildings. On occasions, the source data also provides estimates of required expenditure which indicates the level of backlog maintenance that has accrued from the current levels of expenditure. This has been taken into account when producing the estimates.

BMI Special Report 272 -- Review of Maintenance Costs is available as part of the BMI subscription service, or individually priced ª30.00 each, from BMI, 12 Great George Street, Parliament Square, London SW1P 3AD.