June 2023

Does Your Current Maintenance Program Add Up? — DEVELOPING A BONA FIDE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM By James Rademacher, EBP, Rezkom Enterprises, Inc.

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M aintenance programs consist of porter/clean ing services, maintenance/repair services, deferred maintenance projects, and capital improvement/replacement projects. Identifying the duties and specifications for each will help staff and develop your program. Porter services include items such as common area clean ing, event set-ups and breakdowns, lighting inspections, and maintaining recycling and trash areas. Checklists for these daily or weekly services can be developed based on location and occurrence. Event set-up diagrams are also helpful to allow staff to set up for committee events or meeting needs. Maintenance and repair services include the workorder based repair requests. These requests are generally called

in by owners or residents. Some may be generated after inspections performed by the community manager or the buildings and grounds committee. They could include roof leaks, a loose gutter, hanging siding, leaning signpost, or a damaged fence. Your onsite maintenance repairs should be requested through a computer-generated work order system. This will allow you to show accountability through work order history reports and prove the value of the ser vices to the client. Most regular maintenance items are reactive, which means that repairs are made after something breaks or is damaged. Proactive or preventative maintenance requires performing repairs, inspections, or adjustments to prevent items from breaking down. A good example of this is that pipe flanges on a roof may need to be replaced prior to

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JUNE 2023