Dan Hounsell: Deferred Maintenance Needs Marketing Plantest

By Dan Hounsell, Editor

June 2015

Shiny, new buildings attract money. Repairing existing buildings, alas, does not. Maintenance and engineering managers in institutional and commercial facilities know this dilemma all too well as they wrestle daily trying to find funds for much-needed repairs of their buildings.

Deferred maintenance is hardly a sexy topic, so organizations do almost everything they can to ignore it — until a problem arises, and then it’s too late. What managers need is a marketing campaign — think Don Draper in "Mad Men" — that will help them sell the idea of funding deferred maintenance to their organizations’ top executives. Here are four starting points for creating such a campaign:

It saves money. Maintenance problems only get worse if left unaddressed. Spending a relatively small amount now avoids having to spend much more later.

It’s sustainable. Few things are more environmentally responsible than properly maintaining facilities and their systems in order to ensure they operate energy-efficiently and don’t require replacement.

It creates jobs. More money to properly repair and maintain buildings means a greater need for technicians to do the work.

It’s responsible. Organizations have a duty to follow through on the original commitment they made in building these structures by properly maintaining them in order to ensure they operate safely, reliably and energy-efficiently for as long as possible.

For more insights on the state of deferred maintenance in facilities, watch www.facilitiesnet.com/fmd for the results of our survey of managers who face the challenge daily.

Dan Hounsell offers observations about trends in maintenance and engineering management and the evolving role of managers in facilities. Agree? Disagree? Have something to say? We want to hear from you. Visit myfacilitiesnet.com/danhounsell, and start a conversation.