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When it comes to building maintenance, it’s often best to take a preventive – rather than a corrective – approach. Here’s a look at the logic of not allowing things to get totally out of hand before you spring into action.
Whether residential, commercial or industrial, maintaining a building in tip-top condition is critical to preserving it as an asset, protecting the occupants, and ensuring its resale value is as high as possible.
Ongoing building maintenance, of the preventive variety, is key to avoiding a snowball of costs that mount up if the building is left unattended for too long. It’s rather like maintaining a car – it would be foolish to ignore oil, water and tyre checks, and warning lights, until the point of breakdown.
The Sectional Title Schemes Management (STSM) Act that came into effect in October 2016 mandates that all sectional title buildings have a 10-year maintenance plan in place. While the plan’s format is not prescriptive, it generally includes all major maintenance from electrical, plumbing and glazing, to windows and waterproofing. Beyond aesthetics, a building’s coatings also come into play to preserve its overall structure.
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Stepping into this space with a 360° Partnership Pledge, Plascon offers an optional maintenance programme to accredited applicators. The programme is aimed at extending the life expectancy of a building’s coatings. It’s also impressive from a holistic perspective: it embraces a project’s requirements from the assessment of needs stage to product specification, application, approval and guarantee.
Market Manager for Plascon Professional, Carol Ras advises: “Our maintenance plan is designed to make the paint-preservation aspect of property maintenance as stress-free as possible. The way it works will remind you of a car-maintenance plan.”
Ras explains that the contractor on the project is included in the agreement, together with the building owner. “We keep a record and coordinate with the contractor to conduct an annual building inspection. This will help identify wear-and-tear needs. Because the building is maintained on a continuous basis, its coating integrity is assured for the duration of the specified guarantee.” A brand-new guarantee period will apply should a building with a maintenance plan need an unexpected repaint.
A typical example of what the maintenance plan can achieve, is preventing water ingress as a result of plaster cracks. “Those regular checks and balances prevent a coating from deteriorating to the extent where large- scale repairs are needed. The result? A building’s integrity is preserved, the occupants’ safety is ensured and the asset’s value is enhanced. It’s a win-win,” Ras enthuses.
When a maintenance plan is put in place, everyone involved – asset owner, body corporate and/or management company – can budget for ongoing small-scale maintenance work, rather than being landed with a high and unexpected bill.
Maintaining any structure, whether it’s a sectional title building or not, simply makes good financial sense in the long-term. By leaving coatings maintenance to the professionals through the Plascon 360° Partnership Pledge, building owners, management companies and their contractors can rest assured that they’re saving time and money, and preserving valued assets.
