The most important contribution that professional management can make to a  client property and its owners is the protection and enhancement of the  property’s quality of life and its investment value. It is from these primary fiduciary obligations that all other management  activities take their direction.  

 Maintenance of a property’s structural, mechanical, and cosmetic elements is the most critical aspect of  protecting and enhancing quality of life and investment value. Poorly-managed maintenance will have a lasting, and possibly permanent, negative  impact on every aspect of a property’s operation.  

 Five Basic Categories to Remember

 Every property manager, chief engineer, and board member needs to be familiar  with the five basic categories of maintenance.  

 Routine maintenance, also referred to as custodial or janitorial maintenance, is  property maintenance that is performed on a regularly scheduled basis. This includes simple housekeeping, such as regular cleaning of the common  elements, as well as standard, recurring maintenance tasks, such as pool  cleaning.  

 Corrective or service maintenance is maintenance that is performed specifically  to repair an item or system. For example, when an elevator breaks down, corrective or service maintenance is  called for.  

 Preventive (also known as preventative) or planned maintenance anticipates  potential problems and takes steps to prolong the useful life of a property’s structural, mechanical, and/or cosmetic elements. An example of preventive maintenance would be the performance of inspections on  a regularly scheduled basis as recommended by the property’s elevator service company.  

 Emergency or crisis maintenance is performed with immediate urgency because of  an unforeseen situation. For example, a flood in the lobby caused by a burst pipe would require various  types of emergency maintenance, such as pipe repair and water removal. Because it requires immediate action, emergency or crisis maintenance is  typically the most expensive kind of maintenance. In many cases, however,  emergency or crisis maintenance can be avoided by an effective routine and/or  preventive maintenance schedule and/or by choosing not to defer maintenance  that really needs to be performed.  

 Deferred maintenance is maintenance that needs to be performed but is delayed or  ignored. The reasons for deferring maintenance can run the gamut from waiting to see if a  situation will correct itself (it rarely does), to the board deciding that  funds are more needed elsewhere. But however expensive a pressing maintenance situation may be, it is important  for property decision-makers to bear in mind that a deferred maintenance  situation left unaddressed for too long can easily morph into an even more  expensive emergency or crisis maintenance situation later on.  

 Have a Written Documented Plan

 Ideally, such a maintenance program should take the form of a documented grid or  spreadsheet that is divided into the months of the year and then into daily and  weekly tasks within each month. For example, inspecting and cleaning the common grounds may appear on the  schedule as a housekeeping maintenance task every day of the year, while  testing rooftop fans may be scheduled weekly, and extermination may be  scheduled monthly. Other routine and preventive maintenance tasks should be scheduled in their  appropriate month; for example, the schedule might require fire alarm  inspection in February, inspection and repair of docks in May, interior carpet  shampooing in March and September, and cleaning and resealing the sump in  November. Also included on the master maintenance schedule should be the dates when  service company contracts require inspections or other activities.  

 In fact, planning in advance is the most important aspect of effectively  managing a property’s structural, mechanical, and cosmetic maintenance. Advance planning is a good indicator of efficient management. For this reason, forward-thinking, proactive management will prepare, and  present to association decision-makers, comprehensive documentation of every  structural, mechanical, and cosmetic element that requires any type of  maintenance, and will authoritatively project out the likely remaining useful  life, repair, and replacement requirements of each element. A superior document also will include current and future maintenance, repair,  and replacement pricing.  

 Every association should expect knowledgeable, proactive attention from their  managing agent or association manager with regard to the maintenance of the  property’s structural, mechanical, and cosmetic elements. It is part of management’s duty to bring significant maintenance-related issues to the board’s attention in a manner timely enough to keep the situation within the bounds of  routine or preventive maintenance and out of emergency/crisis maintenance.  

 To accomplish this, management must take a long view of the property and its  needs, and make specific, deliberate plans to address those needs in a timely,  thorough, and professional manner. When the managing agent does so, the association and its staff will operate more  smoothly, the manager’s job will be easier, owners and residents will benefit from enhanced quality of  life and investment value, and the board will be congratulated for having made  a wise management decision.   

 Ellen Lohr, LCAM, is the president of AKAM On-Site – Florida, Inc. The Boca Raton-based company manages many of Florida’s most prestigious condominiums, cooperatives, and homeowner associations.