Addressing Increasingly Complex Deferred Maintenance Decisions
While colleges and universities have faced maintenance challenges for decades, recent trends have elevated maintenance to a strategic imperative for senior leaders. Beyond tighter budgets and widening funding gaps, most institutions face the dual challenge of replacing or renovating aging buildings while maintaining newer “smart” buildings that require more frequent and complex upgrades.
A huge and growing deferred maintenance backlog is arguably one of the most daunting challenges facing most campuses. While a select few institutions have managed to eliminate (or nearly eliminate) deferred maintenance over time, the majority of these institutions possess unique, hard-to-replicate circumstances that have contributed to their success. Realistically, most institutions must adopt a methodical, slow-and-steady approach to smartly chip away at their backlog over time.
Most institutions should adopt a “turning-the-tanker” approach to addressing deferred maintenance. To help Facilities leaders “turn the tanker” and address increasingly complex deferred maintenance decisions, this publication offers six executive lessons to improve planning, prioritization, and executive communication. Download the full study, or explore highlights below.
Deferred maintenance in higher ed
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The perfect storm
The first challenge facing Facilities leaders is a perfect storm of renewal needs. Most institutions face the dual challenge of replacing or renovating antiquated buildings while maintaining newer “smart” buildings that require more frequent and complex upgrades.
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O&M spending far outpaced by other investments
At public institutions, every spending category has risen back above pre-recession level except plant operations and & maintenance (O&M) spending, which has dropped 8% since 1987. At private institutions, plant O&M has grown the least over the past 20 years compared to the other categories, growing less than 1% each year.
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Even if you had $300 million...
Most campuses lack sufficient swing space to absorb the units displaced by construction and simply lack enough staff to support planning, scheduling, and executing more than a few capital projects at once.
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A messy and multifaceted problem
As systems begin to fail, Facilities must divert resources to reactive maintenance activities. However, this leaves fewer resources for preventive maintenance, ultimately increasing the deferred maintenance backlog.
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