Commitment to maintain resources in a community should be programmatic instead of reactive. Simply stated, repairing roadway drainage structure (drop inlet) before it fails by sinking into the ground is proactive maintenance, while scheduling this repair after it has failed is reactive maintenance. The main different, one form of maintenance you control and the other controls you. Bad news, reactive maintenance costs you more money and is very disruptive to operations. Good news, with proper procedures in place combined with adequate funding you can drastically reduce incidents of reactive maintenance.
In 1990 a distinguished group of public and private
sector maintenance professional assembled to conduct an in-depth review of how
public resources were being maintained and to offer recommendations for
improvement. The name of this study was “Committing to the Cost of Ownership”
and in their final report they identified three major areas of concern for
improving how we manage and maintain public resources.
Adequate
Funding:
It was determined that underfunding
of maintenance and repair (M&R) activities was widespread and a persistent
problem. The study concluded that an appropriate budget allocation for routine
M&R should equal 2% to 4% of the aggregated replacement value of the
resource. The study also determined where a neglect of maintenance had caused a
backlog of needed repairs to accumulate; spending must exceed this minimum
level until the backlog has been eliminated.
Our Town’s current strategic
planning document lists our resource value at $1,000,000,000, which would mean
we need to set aside between $20,000,000 and $40,000,000 a year to fund our
maintenance and repair program.
Our Department of Public Works (DPW) annual budget funds all of our routine maintenance and some limited repair activities, but falls far short in being adequate to meet all of the maintenance and repair needs of our resources. Special funding sources such as the Capital Improvement Fund and Chapter 90 funds are primarily dedicated towards maintenance and repair (M&R) activities, but even with these additional resources we still fall far short of where we should be.
Our Capital Improvement Program instead of being established at funding threshold equal to 2% of our net resource valve it is funded at 1/10th of 1% or 0.01%.
Condition
Assessment:
Periodic
condition assessment (inspection) is an essential step in effective facilities
management. This process involves
comparing the current condition of a resource against the condition if it were
being maintained properly. The result of this comparison identifies your
maintenance backlog. Ideally this information would be used to develop your
next year’s M&R budget. This process also becomes a management tool for
monitoring the effectiveness of M&R activities. When the inspection takes
place and you notice a resource starting to fail you schedule the required
repairs before it fails which is proactive instead of reactive maintenance. You
do the repairs when it is convenient instead of being forced to do them at an
inconvenient and more expensive time.
Maintenance
Management:
A computerized management system is
where all of your work requests are stored in data files where they can be
scheduled at any time. This is also where your maintenance backlog projects can
be found. No more waiting for something to break. Go to the computer and
schedule a week’s worth of tasks in priority order for each employee in your
organization. This data provides you
with reliable resource data on work project completion, cost, history of
repairs, etc. Critical work events and routine repair requests can be schedule
and will automatically be generated on the due date. Web-based tracking of
resident complaints allow originators to access updated status on complaints
until completed. Even with all of the variables in place, without a management
system to facilitate your organization your overall success will be limited.
It is unfortunate but inevitable that the
construction of new facilities attracts far greater attention than the
maintenance and repair of existing ones. While facilities are designed to
provide service over long periods of time, the substantial costs of
construction are addressed all at once in public debate and management
decisions. In contrast, the yearly cost of maintenance seem small, although
over the course of the facility’s service life they generally total much more
than the initial costs of construction. The commissioning and occupancy of a
new facility are news-worthy event that attracts public attention, but the
ongoing work of maintenance and repair receives little notice except when
failures occur that affect the ability of the facility’s user to perform work.
We just opened a brand new High School that is going to require a much more
sophisticated maintenance and repair program than our previous school with its
state-of-the-art systems and equipment.
Managers and elected officials, faced with the
constant challenge of balancing competing public priorities and limited fiscal
resources, often find it easy to neglect the maintenance and repair of public
buildings, and not only because new construction or other activities have
greater public interest. The cumulative effects of wear on a facility are slow
to become apparent and only infrequently disrupt a facility’s user. Managers of
facilities seldom have adequate information to predict when problems will occur
if maintenance efforts are deferred.
These managers are often poorly equipped to argue persuasively the need
for steady continuing commitment to maintenance. Underfunding of maintenance
and repair is such a prevalent practice in the public sector that it has become
in many communities a de facto policy that each year compounds
the problem as the backlog of deficiencies grows.
Neglect of maintenance can nevertheless affect
public health and safety, reduce productivity of public employees, and cause
long-term financial losses as buildings deteriorate prematurely and must be
replaced. Decisions to neglect maintenance, whether made intentionally or
through ignorance, violate the public trust and constitute a mismanagement of
public funds.
This is a brief overview of some of the building
blocks required for having a proactive maintenance and repair program. In Part 3 I will address problem-solving and
an overview of where we are today in the Town of Longmeadow concerning the care
of our resources. [1]
Although
I am a Select Board member these views are my personal views and observations
and should not be considered as the official opinion of the Longmeadow Select
Board.
[1] Committing to the Cost of Ownership, National Academy
Press, Washington, D.C. 1990
Town of Longmeadow Three Year Strategic Plan 2007 -
2010
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