When everything needs doing, what do you do first?

A lot of organisations probably have some version of the same problem: a building with a long maintenance list and nowhere near enough money to do everything on it.

The temptation can be to prioritise the things that are most visible, the things people complain about most, or the things that have been sitting on the list the longest. But age isn’t necessarily priority, and visibility isn’t necessarily risk.

There are, of course, lots of ways to prioritise maintenance, with consequences and implications attached to every choice. But one simple way of thinking about it is to ask:

What happens if we don’t do this now?

And that’s kind of it.

A leaking roof might be relatively expensive to repair, but leaving it could damage ceilings, insulation, framing, electrical services and other parts of the building.

A tired carpet might look awful and generate complaints, but if it’s safe, replacing it might achieve very little compared with fixing water ingress.

A failing hot-water cylinder in a residential service might have a relatively small replacement cost but a significant operational consequence if it fails.

An exterior paint job might be largely cosmetic in one situation but important protective maintenance in another.

So rather than prioritising maintenance purely by cost, visibility or how long something has been on the list, another approach is to think about the consequence of waiting.

I would consider four consequences:

• Safety and compliance — could delaying the work create a safety issue or leave you non-compliant? This is particularly important for organisations providing accommodation or supporting people in buildings where they sleep.
• Damage — will waiting allow a relatively small problem to damage something else?
• Service impact — if it fails, does it affect your ability to use the building or deliver your service?
• Cost of waiting — is a $2k problem reasonably likely to become a $20k problem?

And there’s a fifth category I think is really important to consider:

People.

Something doesn’t necessarily need to be dangerous or structurally significant to matter. If a building is cold, uncomfortable, undignified or simply unpleasant for the people using it, that should carry weight too, particularly in the for-purpose sector.

A simple scoring exercise can be a useful starting point:

It’s not intended to produce a scientifically perfect answer. A score of 12 doesn’t automatically mean something should be done before something scoring 11. But it can help make the reasons behind a decision visible and give people a useful place to start the conversation.

It can also help shift the conversation from “What can we afford to do?” to “What can we afford to wait on?”

There’s another assumption I hear reasonably often: that construction and maintenance costs will only continue to rise, so if something needs doing, we’re better off doing it now.

I’m not sure that’s a particularly useful way to make property decisions. Sometimes bringing work forward makes sense. Sometimes waiting does. Assuming everything should happen now because it might cost more later can be just as problematic as continually deferring work and may be a sign that longer-term property planning isn’t happening.

But that’s probably another Note.