7+ Sample Building Maintenance Checklist

What is a Building Maintenance Checklist?

Before we go to the checklist part, we should talk about what is Building Maintenance first. Building Maintenance is defined as the necessary work that is done in order to keep and improve every facility or area to meet or exceed an acceptable standard and to sustain the value of the said building. Depending on the building, it includes a wide variety of tasks, such as cleaning common areas or repairing broken items. Building maintenance consists of a great deal of work in order to make sure it is functional for its users, as well as to make sure that it is comfortable for them. A Building Maintenance Checklist lists all the important areas and working of a particular building or facility that need to be inspected and maintained, to make sure that it is not neglected during the maintenance process.

Who are the Building Maintenance Workers?

These are some of the people you typically see that are performing the building maintenance procedure:

Maintenance Technicians: These are the workers that deal with tasks typically involving specialized skills. They deal with maintaining and repairing HVAC systems (heat, ventilation, air conditioning), as well as electrical and water systems. Their tasks are usually work orders and they report to their supervisors who are overseeing their work.Janitors: These are the workers that handle the general cleaning of a building or facility. They clean and mop the floors, clean the bathrooms, and vacuum carpets. In a small residential building, they just clean the common areas or the lobby.Maintenance Supervisor: These people plan, assign, and manage a team of workers during a shift. They oversee maintenance planning and scheduling for a building. They also handle concerns regarding personnel, such as interviewing, hiring, and training upcoming maintenance workers.

Categories of Building Maintenance

Building Maintenance can be divided into three categories. These are the following:

Routine Maintenance: This category of building maintenance is described as scheduled maintenance tasks to protect a building or structure from decay and preserve its condition. Routine Maintenance can be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly, or on a consistent schedule. Examples of routine maintenance include the following: cleaning of floors and walls, proper garbage disposal, cleaning of water reservoirs, painting or repainting walls, and inspection of utility systems.Preventive Maintenance: This category of building maintenance describes the tasks that are done in order to prevent early damage to the building and retain its structural integrity. This is also done to make the structure strong and sound. Types of preventive maintenance include time-based preventive maintenance and usage-based preventive maintenance.Corrective Maintenance: This category of building maintenance is described as activities that are taken to restore a building’s functionality and comfort. This can also be called remedial maintenance. It is also a type of maintenance that removes any decayed or damaged part of the building structure. Examples include emergency repairs, simple repairs, and quality corrections.

What are the Types of Activities Performed During Building Maintenance?

These are some of the types of activities performed during a building maintenance procedure:

Cleaning of floors and walls. This can be done in order to prevent dirt and dust from accumulating on them, making them look unpleasant and dirty.Cleaning of windows. From time to time, dirt, dust, fingerprints, and mud accumulate on the windows. To clean this, a special kind of cleaning liquid exists that does not affect the build quality of windows as you clean them.Cleaning the sink and toilets. Bathroom toilets and sinks should be cleaned in order to promote good hygienic practices and prevent bacteria from accumulating in these areas.Cleaning of ventilation fans. Regular cleaning of ventilation fans will prevent dust from accumulating on them, and will also avoid tougher cleaning measures as dust dramatically builds up if the fans are neglected for a very long time. A clean ventilation fan will also promote cleaner circulation of air around the establishment.Environmental cleaning. Cleaning the environment helps improve its aesthetic look and also prevents the buildup of unnecessary trash and dirt. A clean environment can also help improve the mood of the people in it.Cleaning of water systems. Overhead water tanks and water sumps must be periodically cleaned, with an interval no greater than 3 months. This is done so the water stored inside it is always clean and to avoid any unnecessary incidents regarding contamination.Supply line maintenance. Checking for leaks in the water supply line is also done in regular intervals. Should a leak be found, it must be sealed immediately to avoid any further problems, such as the water suddenly running out due to an undiscovered leak.

What are the Challenges Regarding Building Maintenance?

Building inspection and maintenance isn’t as easy as putting one and one together to make two. It contains a number of challenges or problems that you usually face. Here are some examples of them:

Cost Control. Building managers are often pressured to maintain a very high quality of service using a very small shoestring budget. Maintenance costs affect a great deal on the facility’s budget. Getting rid of a reactive maintenance strategy and replacing it instead with a planned one can help save the facility a huge amount of money.Lack of Manpower. Lack of people who can do the job can slow down the building maintenance process. Finding applicants that are qualified to do the job is even harder. Should the manager choose to train already existing personnel to be qualified for maintenance, it will add to the cost control problem, as training involves time and money.Record Management Problems. Managers get buried under all kinds of records such as meeting minutes. Even worse, they sometimes take record-keeping for granted. From time to time, maintenance records are usually not kept and left to gather dust in a dark place. Without these, managers lose track of important matters such as maintenance schedules and history. A modern solution would be investing in software that helps manage records in the building.Building lifespan. As time goes on, building owners continuously strive hard to make their establishment look as modern as possible in order to attract the most tenants or investors. But the inevitability that comes with time is that some systems and structures will eventually look faded and even start to deteriorate. It can even be severe enough to affect the structural integrity of some components.

How to Prepare a Building Maintenance Checklist

A Building Maintenance Checklist is a great tool to have in order to streamline the process of maintenance works. With that being said, here are the steps in preparing one:

1. Planning process.

Determine and detail the type of building maintenance that needs to be done, if it is preventive, corrective, or routine maintenance. Plan ahead on how many workers are needed, and how many tools are to be used in order to conduct the building maintenance. Include also the spare parts to be used in case replacing is necessary. Also plan for the number of working hours that the maintenance task needs, and the overall cost of the process. This is important to avoid using the wrong tools for the job, to control costs, and also to avoid having too many overworked workers for a single task.

2. List down the areas that need to be maintained.

After the planning process, this step follows. In this process, all the areas that require maintenance are to be listed down in the checklist. It can include the entire facility and its outside surroundings, or just the inside of the facility. Also, include in this process the type of maintenance that is to be done on each area of the building. It is also up to the person preparing this document if a questionnaire checklist can be done, or just a simple pass or fail checklist.

3. Leave spaces for feedback.

It is also important to leave some spaces in the checklist for feedback or maintenance report, problems found with the corresponding actions taken, and the recommendations from the workers who conducted the building maintenance. The recommendations written will help the facility manager to know if any more components that will need replacing or restoring in the next maintenance interval. The actions taken will also let the manager know what the maintenance workers did on the area they are inspecting and maintaining, and also if there are any defective parts found and immediately replaced.

4. Verify the checklist created.

When the creation of the checklist is done, make sure to verify it, to make sure that everything is correct from the type of maintenance to be done, the overall cost, the number of workers needed, their corresponding work hours, the type of tools, down to the number of spare parts needed for the building maintenance. Make sure that nothing of importance is overlooked, especially in areas that are already faded and show signs of decay. You should also check if there are areas of the building that don’t even need maintenance but you may have accidentally included. If you hand it over to the building maintenance workers, it is also important to let them know about the type of building maintenance to be done, and the components that you have included in the checklist, so they can also verify your created checklist and also to avoid any confusion.

FAQs

What are the various Building Maintenance Certifications?

Here are the 3 various certifications for building maintenance workers:

  • HVAC Certification – This type of certification can be acquired if maintenance workers demonstrate enough competence in handling Heat, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning systems. Various apprenticeships help workers in handling these systems should they wish to acquire HVAC certification.
  • Building Operator Certification – Areas covered in this type of certification include HVAC systems, energy management, control point management, and electrical distribution. There are also apprenticeships and approved institutions that offer this type of training to candidates, just like the HVAC Certification.
  • Building Systems Maintenance Certification – This type of certification is offered to the workers who maintain building systems. The topics covered are efficient energy management, HVAC, plumbing, and water treatment.

What are the organizations that use building maintenance?

Here are the following organizations that make use of building maintenance:

  • Businesses – Small businesses that have small budgets make use of their general operations and usually outsource the maintenance service by themselves. Larger businesses make use of their own in-house department for their own needs.
  • Residential areas – These include apartment or condominium complexes. They usually hire and maintain a team of building maintenance workers to inspect, repair, maintain, and take care of any further maintenance needs of the entire complex.
  • Government Organizations – Building maintenance teams are utilized by the government to make sure that the city buildings, government offices, post offices, etc. are always in good condition so they can properly serve the needs of the public.

Is a building maintenance checklist a legally binding document?

It totally depends. If it is just a simple checklist to be handed over to the building maintenance team, then it is not legally binding. However, if it becomes a maintenance contract, it is now a legal document. Maintenance contracts are usually made if the particular business is outsourcing its own maintenance service. A maintenance contract serves as a legal agreement between the company and its hired maintenance service provider.

What causes a building’s condition to deteriorate?

There are various reasons that can lead to a building’s deterioration. Here are some of them:

  • Substandard materials – The use of lower than quality materials in buildings can lead to earlier deterioration of the infrastructure because it usually has the tendency to have less strength and worse manufacturing than materials that are of good quality.
  • Improper Maintenance – This is the main cause of a building’s deterioration. Items that are usually skipped in the checklist in order to save time can have undetected signs of fatigue or failure. To combat this, a thorough maintenance procedure is to be observed.
  • Harsh Environment – A building or infrastructure built in an environment that usually experiences harsh weather conditions will deteriorate faster, especially if the structure already has cracks present, which can serve as a pathway for harmful chemicals to enter the structure and speed up the deterioration process.

If a building maintenance team will perform their work, it is important for them to go through a proper checklist, and not just randomly going through items because they feel like it. Without a checklist, and without confirming that the area actually needs maintenance, the worker may do more harm than good and cause the number of problems to spike up. This article has examples of a building maintenance checklist listed above for use or reference.