Inspections and renewals across a building's life, from sourced service life data.
Programme, labour and cash flow. 5 questions answered below, each with the arithmetic behind it and the limits of what the tool decides. Open the Maintenance Planner tool.
A building starts to need work the day it is finished, and the cost of that work is predictable in aggregate even when it is unpredictable in detail. This planner turns service lives and intervals into a schedule of tasks and costs, so the money a building will need over ten or twenty years can be seen while it is still being designed. The service lives are published figures attached to components, not guesses, and each carries the interval it implies. What the planner does not do is a condition survey: it assumes components are installed as specified and maintained as scheduled, and it reports the years in which cost falls rather than forecasting a failure. Where an interval is uncertain, that is an input to change rather than a fact to trust.
A roof covering with a twenty year life, external paint at seven years, internal paint at ten, and a boiler service annually. Over a twenty year horizon the roof falls once at year twenty, the external paint at years seven and fourteen, the internal paint at year ten, and the service every year. The annual average is small and the peaks are not, which is the reason a sinking fund is calculated from the peaks rather than from the average. Bring the external paint to five years in a coastal location and the plan gains a third and fourth repaint inside the same horizon.
From published service lives attached to the components you list, and each is editable because exposure changes it. A roof covering has a nominal life, a paint system has a shorter one, a serviceable plant item has an interval rather than a life. The figures are starting points with a source, not predictions about a particular building.
A schedule of tasks by year, with their costs, the annual total across the horizon, and the peaks where work coincides. It is what a sinking fund is calculated from and what a building owner needs to know before a lease is signed. The output is a plan, so the work can be budgeted and procured rather than discovered.
Yes, and often you should. A coastal location shortens the life of external coatings, a harsh sun shortens the life of sealants, and a sheltered interior lengthens both. The interval you enter is the one the plan uses, and the effect of a change is immediate, which makes the assumption behind a maintenance budget visible instead of buried.
No. A condition survey inspects what is actually there and grades its state, which is how a real maintenance plan is built for an existing building. This planner works from specification and service life, which suits a new building or a budget. The two are complementary: the survey tells you where you are, and the planner tells you what the next twenty years look like from there.
Because maintenance is a cost that arrives whether or not it was planned for, and an unplanned one is paid for at the worst moment. Distributing it across years, and knowing which years are heavy, allows a fund to be built rather than a crisis to be met. It also changes design decisions: a component with a short life and difficult access can be replaced before construction by one that is cheaper over twenty years.