What is Deferred Maintenance

Deferred maintenance occurs when repairs and maintenance are put off due to budget constraints or other reasons. Common causes of deferred maintenance include prioritizing other urgent tasks and the necessity of focusing on critical operations over routine maintenance.

This builds up a maintenance backlog, increases future costs, and creates safety hazards. Here, we’ll look at what deferred maintenance is, why it happens, and the risks.

Quick Facts

• Deferred maintenance puts off essential repairs, and it gets more expensive and hazardous over time.
• Financial constraints and poor planning are the top reasons for deferred maintenance, which affects real estate, infrastructure, and education.
• Auditing regularly, funding adequately, and using technology are key to managing and reducing deferred maintenance.

What is Deferred Maintenance?

Understanding the complexity of deferred maintenance is key to managing different sectors, including real estate and municipal infrastructure.

What is Deferred Maintenance

Putting off essential maintenance and repair work results in a maintenance backlog. This includes deferred maintenance tasks like a leaky roof, faulty HVAC systems, or peeling paint left unattended over time. As these issues are left unresolved, they are added to the deferred repairs list.

As this goes on the cost and scope of fixing these deferred tasks grows exponentially.

This neglect puts more pressure on financial resources and complicates future budgeting as the cost of more complex repairs that could have been simpler if done earlier.

Reasons for Deferred Maintenance

Financial constraints are a major reason many choose to defer maintenance. They reduce the ability to perform regular maintenance and repairs.

Entities and individuals who own properties often put off maintenance because of a lack of funds or the hope that the issue will be fixed without intervention. This funding shortfall could be due to a constrained maintenance budget, economic downturns, or poor resource allocation.

Poor planning and data management also contribute to deferred maintenance. Inaccurate budgeting and timing often mean necessary repairs get missed, and then the deferred actions snowball.

Regular operations can give way when emergencies arise or resources are scarce, and existing maintenance issues worsen.

Types of Deferred Maintenance

Deferred maintenance comes in two forms: strategic and involuntary.

Strategic Deferred Maintenance

Strategic deferred maintenance involves focusing on high-priority tasks and postponing low-priority ones.

Involuntary Deferred Maintenance

Involuntary deferred maintenance occurs when unexpected events like emergencies or a staff shortage occur.

Both types greatly impact an asset’s lifespan, performance, and reliability.

Risks and Consequences of Deferring Maintenance

Putting off maintenance may initially seem like a cost savings, but it can have serious long-term consequences. These include increased safety risks, higher costs down the line, and reduced asset efficiency.

Increased Safety Hazards

Putting off maintenance tasks can increase safety risks. For example, in city infrastructure, neglecting to maintain roads or bridges can lead to accidents and reduced operational effectiveness.

Potential hazards include structural issues, faulty electrical work, and water leaks, which can have severe consequences if left unattended.

The consequences go beyond physical injury. Neglected maintenance creates hazardous conditions that can impact health and lead to legal action against responsible parties.

In educational settings, this neglect compromises the physical well-being and learning environment and can lead to big legal problems due to liability.

Higher Future Costs

Putting off maintenance often means higher future maintenance costs. Neglected repairs can compound and grow at 7% per annum and be more expensive than the original fix.

These costs compound over time with inflation and other economic factors.

Asset Efficiency

Putting off maintenance reduces asset performance over time and results in hidden costs, such as slower production rates and higher energy costs. Deferred maintenance puts organizations in a reactive mode, where they have to respond to breakdowns when they happen instead of preventing them.

Environmental Impact

Deferred maintenance also has an environmental impact. Neglecting maintenance tasks means using more resources and emitting more emissions, which degrades air quality and worsens climate change.

By doing maintenance on time, we maintain not only asset efficiency but also the cause of environmental sustainability.

Examples of Deferred Maintenance

Real-life examples from different sectors show the extent of deferred maintenance.

These examples show how deferred maintenance affects multiple industries.

Municipal Infrastructure

Municipal infrastructure is a classic example of deferred maintenance. In the US infrastructure alone, $1 trillion in deferred maintenance is reported, including neglected roads, bridges, and public buildings.

The National Park Service, for example, has $23 billion in deferred maintenance for bridges, tunnels, and monuments.

Real Estate Properties

In real estate, deferred maintenance can reduce property value due to visible damage and neglect. Common issues include malfunctioning HVAC systems, electrical failures, and neglected landscaping.

Sellers with deferred maintenance should disclose the issues and price the property accordingly.

Educational Institutions

In public-sector schools, a lapse in timely maintenance often leads to deferred maintenance issues that threaten safety and education. Maintenance backlogs are common in these institutions and hamper their ability to deliver quality education.

In Memphis, for example, the situation is dire because the district can only fund part of the maintenance requirements. As of August of 2024, the school district needed $500 Million in funding to fix infrastructure issues.

Combining delayed maintenance and insufficient funding means big problems for learners and educators.

How to Manage and Reduce Deferred Maintenance

To address deferred maintenance, you need a comprehensive approach. This includes regular audits and sufficient funding to control and reduce maintenance backlogs.

Conduct Regular Audits

Regular maintenance audits are key to identifying missed maintenance tasks. By regularly incorporating scheduled maintenance and thorough inspections, you can prevent maintenance work from piling up, which is why a maintenance audit is essential for good management.

Routine maintenance is key to business continuity.

Prioritize and address the most critical issues as identified by the audit.

Implement Preventive Maintenance Programs

A preventive maintenance program reduces the likelihood of unexpected breakdowns. By consolidating all maintenance data in a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), scheduling and refining different maintenance tasks are simplified.

Taking a proactive approach means early detection of required maintenance, which prevents the escalation of deferred maintenance and reinforces consistent preventive maintenance.

Prioritize Tasks

Task prioritization is key to optimizing resource use and maintaining assets safely and efficiently. By ensuring you perform routine maintenance, maintenance teams can use historical data and real-time analytics to predict breakdowns and schedule maintenance work.

By prioritizing these tasks in an organized way, you reduce downtime and long-term costs.

Get Sufficient Funding

Getting sufficient funding is key to addressing deferred maintenance, and the maintenance manager plays a crucial role in this process. It would help if you showed the financial impact of deferring maintenance to get more resources.

Documenting data and tracking progress can justify your funding request and get timely repairs.

Technology Solutions to Reduce Deferred Maintenance

Reducing a deferred maintenance backlog requires an asset management plan to reduce deferred maintenance. The plan should include logging maintenance activities, scheduling regular inspections, and coordinating maintenance.

Logging Maintenance Activities

Maintenance managers play a crucial role in keeping records of maintenance activities, which is key to tracking progress and informing decision-making. These records should include what type of maintenance was done and which will give you the historical and current state of the assets.

Implementing a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) like WorkTrek will help with precise record keeping and identify and address delayed tasks.

Scheduling Regular Inspections

Identifying maintenance needs early through regular inspections will prevent more serious problems from arising and reduce the need for urgent and costly repairs.

Coordinating Maintenance

Maintenance and repairs during low usage periods reduce the impact on operations and allow for detailed examination. By informing stakeholders of the maintenance schedule, you minimize any disruptions, as everyone is in sync.

Data-Driven Decision Making

Using a CMMS allows data-driven decision-making by providing maintenance history, performance indicators, and predictive analytics. This will improve maintenance management, operational efficiency, and work order reduction.

Automation and Predictive Maintenance

Modern CMMS is integrated with various tools to provide real-time insights throughout operations and improve efficiency. These systems automate the maintenance management process by creating work orders and sending alerts based on triggers.

Conclusion

Addressing and reducing deferred maintenance is key to efficient, safe, and environmentally friendly assets. Institutions can manage and reduce maintenance backlogs through regular audits, preventive maintenance, task prioritization, and technology usage.

This will result in long-term cost savings and improved asset reliability and security.