Planned Preventative Maintenance
Costed ten year maintenance plans for managing agents, freeholders, residents’ management companies and commercial owners.
Overview
A planned preventative maintenance survey tells you what your building will need, what it will cost, and when, across the next ten years. Instead of reacting to failures, you get one costed plan to budget against, set service charges from, and build a reserve fund around.
Why it matters
Unplanned repairs are the expensive ones. A plan shows the major liabilities coming, sequences works so access is paid for once, and evidences charges to leaseholders. It also separates the health, safety and compliance items that cannot wait from work that can be planned across the decade.
What We Assess
Every relevant element is inspected, given a condition grade, and placed on a ten year timeline by priority.
How We Specify
Each recommendation is specified and costed against published industry data, ready to go out to a contractor.
How We Phase It
Works are sequenced so scaffolding and access are paid for once, with urgent items kept apart.
What you receive
- An executive summary of the immediate spend and the total ten year liability.
- An element by element schedule with condition grades, priorities, specified recommendations and costs.
- A photographic record of the property and its defects.
- A year by year plan for service charge budgeting and reserve fund planning, with preliminaries, fees, VAT and inflation included.
Who it is for
Managing agents, freeholders and residents’ management companies who answer for a building’s common parts and its spend, and commercial owners planning for the long term. A plan makes Section 20 consultation straightforward and gives everyone paying into the service charge evidenced figures.
PPM is for managed and commercial buildings. It is not a homebuyer survey.
The RICS standard
Planned preventative maintenance of commercial and residential property
RICS professional standard, reissued April 2023, first published as a guidance note in February 2022
Appointment: RICS Building Surveyor Services for asset management, under the RICS Short Form of Consultant’s Appointment for Designated Services.
The standard sets out how PPM surveys and reports should be prepared: taking the client’s instructions, preparing for and carrying out the inspection, dealing with health and safety, fire and accessibility matters, and producing a costed PPM schedule. It applies to the building fabric work a building surveyor undertakes, as distinct from mechanical and electrical replacement reports.
It also recognises that maintenance is not always preventative. A good plan covers the repairs and renewals a building will need, not only the routine servicing, so budgets are set against the real future cost.
“PPM surveying has become a core service provided by chartered building surveyors.”
RICS, Planned preventative maintenance of commercial and residential property
Key terms
- PPM schedule
- The costed, year by year programme of maintenance and renewal, usually over ten years.
- Condition grade
- The rating given to each element at inspection, which drives the priority of the work.
- Priority
- How soon an item needs attention, from urgent works to items planned later in the cycle.
- Reserve fund
- Money set aside, often through the service charge, to meet future major works; a PPM schedule helps to size it.
- Lifecycle cost
- The cost of an element over its whole life, including maintenance, repair and replacement.
How this maps to your RICS appointment
Planned maintenance is appointed under the asset management section of RICS Building Surveyor Services. The headings below follow the RICS Building Surveyor Services schedule, used with the RICS Short Form of Consultant’s Appointment for Designated Services, so the services you see here are the services you tick in your appointment.
Survey strategy
A survey or sampling strategy agreed for the building or portfolio, and existing records reviewed.
Inspection
The condition of each element inspected and the extent of repair and maintenance established.
Programmed maintenance plan
A costed plan prepared in a format that fits the client’s own records.
Life expectancy and life cycle cost
Advice on how long components will last and what they will cost over their life.
Implementation
The plan implemented and managed, contractors advised on, and maintenance work inspected on the client’s behalf.
Case studies
A ten year plan a managing agent can budget against
A converted block where most elements graded poor, phased so the envelope works shared one scaffold.
A decade of spend for a Grade II listed asset
A complex listed building in a London conservation area, with consent needs identified before any work was tendered.
A ten year plan for a listed watermill complex
Three historic buildings in daily use, planned as one estate for the trust that looks after them.
Our plans run from single listed conversions to seven figure programmes on central London mansion blocks, and across whole portfolios under one appointment. See all case studies
Avalon Surveyors Ltd is regulated by RICS and has been in continuous practice since 2000. Our PPM reports are prepared to the RICS professional standard Planned preventative maintenance of commercial and residential property.
Discuss a PPM survey
Tell us about the building you are responsible for and we will come back to you within two business days.