Survey Offers Glimpse of Best Roofing Practices

A recent survey of Building Operating Management readers provides a benchmark for best roofing practices among facility executives.

The survey found that respondents give preventive maintenance high priority. What’s more, they recognize important differences among roofing contractors — and don’t put low bid at the top of the list of factors for selecting roofing contractors.

Key Findings:

• Respondents spend substantially more on preventive maintenance than on repair. More than half report that all of their properties have scheduled roof maintenance.
• Only 18 percent say the biggest difference among roofing contractors is price.
• Asked whether scheduled maintenance is a waste of time, 87 percent say it isn’t.
• Only 17 percent rate low price “very important” in choosing a roofing contractor. By contrast, 65 percent say it is very important for roofing contractors to have quality and safety programs.

Do the responses to the survey reflect standard roofing practice today? “Absolutely not,” says Karen Warseck, president of Building Diagnostics Associates, an architecture firm that offers roof consulting. “These are definitely the conscientious folks. This is more a picture of best practices.”

The size of the firms that responded to the survey might explain the nature of the responses. Half of those responding were responsible for 600,000 or more square feet of space; only 7 percent were responsible for less than 100,000 square feet of space.

Surveys were sent to a random sample of 1,500 Building Operating Management readers. The response rate was 8 percent. The survey was conducted by Building Operating Management and Roofing Contractor magazines. The initial questionnaire was developed by David Harrison, senior vice president, GAF Materials Corporation and U.S. Intec.

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