Maintenance & Repairs

Maintenance is crucial to the lifespan of buildings. Unfortunately for building owners, entropy only flows in one direction. The condition of a building does not improve of its own accord. Mortar weathers away, timber decays and steel corrodes. Because of this, buildings require regular care in order to maintain their condition.

A proactive approach to maintenance is the best way to protect your building against this relentless deterioration. A maintenance plan will save you a lot of frustration in dealing with the failures that arise when maintenance is ignored. It begs the question then why so many building owners and occupiers fail to implement even the most basic maintenance plan. Most owners do not intervene until the failures have occurred – by which time the issues are more difficult and more costly to deal with.

BUILD YOUR MAINTENANCE STRATEGY INTO YOUR BUSINESS PLAN:

SET ASIDE BUDGETS

PREPARE A PLAN

IMPLEMENT THE PLAN

REDUCE YOUR LIABILITIES

If you’re a tenant of a commercial property your lease will oblige you to repair and maintain the property to a certain standard. For some tenants, this obligation seems to be low on their list of priorities. However, if you do not honour this obligation you will face having to reimburse the landlord for carrying out the work after the lease has ended. At this time you will have lost control of the work. You will not be able to enjoy the benefits of any favourable contractors’ rates that you could have enjoyed previously.

Furthermore, you may have to pay the landlord’s costs in serving a schedule of dilapidations upon you. Under most lease agreements; surveyors’ fees, solicitors’ fees and project management fees are all chargeable against the tenant.

For these reasons it is always our advice to commercial property tenants to have a maintenance regime in place. Carrying out repair and maintenance obligations during the lease period can significantly minimise lease-end liabilities.

As a building owner or occupier we can advise you on the most cost-effective way to manage your maintenance liabilities. We can put together planned maintenance regimes to establish a framework to work to. We can also tender the works and organise and manage contractors on your behalf if you do not have your own in-house team. This enables you to concentrate on your core business operations while we take care of the building.

Contact us today, tell us about your business and your premises and we’ll let you know how we can save you time and money.

examples of recent maintenance projects:

Organising and managing drainage repairs to a business park

Scheduling a scheme of repairs to an 18th Century Listed barn conversion

Organising and managing lease-end repairs and redecoration to a 1960’s industrial unit

Providing a local womens' charity with pre-lease advice on minimising future repair liabilities