Long-Term Building Preventative Maintenance

Do you have a long-term maintenance plan for your building?  If not, you should consider formulating one.  No matter how old your building is, there is preventative maintenance that should be performed to make sure your building’s components do not prematurely deteriorate, or even catastrophically fail.  Such catastrophic failures prompted Miami-Dade County to implement a recertification program in the 1970s for buildings that reach 40 years old.  Miami-Dade County’s program requires owners to have their buildings inspected and necessary repairs performed in a very short period of time after the County issues a notice to the owner notifying the owner that his/her building must be recertified.  Broward County recently implemented a similar program, and other counties might follow their lead.  However, you should not wait until it is required by a mandatory recertification program to perform preventative maintenance on your building.

If you wait until the last minute and are subject to a recertification program like the ones in Miami-Dade County and Broward County, you might face fines if you are not able to complete the necessary repairs within the time frames set by the program.  Even if you are not in a county with a formal recertification program, performing long-term preventative maintenance might save you money in the long run and will probably make devastating failures less likely.  If you wait too long to implement a maintenance program, you might discover problems in your building at such a late stage that you will have no choice but to perform substantial and expensive repairs immediately, thereby depriving yourself of the opportunity to properly budget for the expenditure or shop around for the best deal on the repairs.  While implementing a long-term maintenance program might not be your highest priority concern, you should not wait until it is too late to give the longevity of your building the attention it deserves.  Some architects and engineers specialize in evaluating the maintenance needs of buildings and developing long-term maintenance plans, including preparing for and complying with recertification programs like the ones in Miami-Dade County and Broward County.  If you need assistance in developing a long-term maintenance plan, assistance is available, you simply need to contact a qualified architect or engineer to evaluate your building’s particular needs to start the process.