How to break out of the deferred maintenance cycle with holistic system upgrades
What if you could finally clear out your facility’s deferred maintenance backlog and still end up cash flow positive?
What if you could finally clear out your facility’s deferred maintenance backlog and still end up cash flow positive?
No need to pinch yourself - you’re not dreaming. In fact, it is possible to address several of your deprioritized maintenance projects without overtaxing your staff or getting stopped by budgetary red tape.
The dreaded deferred maintenance cycle
Any facility manager is deeply familiar with the dreaded deferred maintenance cycle. Tight budgets plus lack of time, manpower, or specialized expertise often mean that some upgrades or repairs to equipment are deferred or postponed until extra funding becomes available. But really, when is extra funding available? Without the necessary capital, your backlog of projects starts to grow… and grow… and grow.
Even if you want to be proactive with routine maintenance, you might simply be forced to prioritize only the most critical upgrades at a given time. Without important repairs and upgrades, system failures or breakdowns become more frequent, which in turn create a whole landslide of potential issues related to employee health, safety, and - of course - costs. Now you’ve been sucked into the deferred maintenance cycle, allocating precious funds to putting out fires (hopefully not actual ones) and dealing with unexpected downtime, instead of timely preventative maintenance.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that the cost to address these unexpected issues ultimately tend to outweigh the cost of routine maintenance for the same equipment. With frequent breakdowns and shortened life cycles, it can be up to ten times more expensive!
When you’re stuck in the deferred maintenance cycle, it can feel almost impossible to escape it. With every new budget cycle, funds get allocated to the most urgent projects, with little left to spare.
So, how do you break out of this cycle?
Breaking out of the cycle
While a maintenance project feels like its own individual endeavor, each one can have an impact on your entire system’s functionality and ongoing costs. An overdue repair on your cooling system will have a ripple effect on temperature-sensitive equipment, or an outdated piece of machinery could be tripling the facility’s overall energy consumption.
To that end, we recommend starting with a thorough assessment of your facility’s equipment and energy consumption. Not only does this enable you to properly itemize and prioritize your list of necessary upgrades and repairs, it also provides you with a comprehensive view of your system and how the various components are impacting each other.
Supercharging your upgrade
Here at Promise Energy, we specialize in finding holistic energy management solutions for complex energy systems. This means that we don’t just assess sites for solar and other renewable technologies; we also investigate efficiency, operational, and cost reduction opportunities across lightning, ventilation, controls, and other elements of the building envelope and central plant.
Leveraging this unique process and our integrated expertise, we can uncover hidden synergies between deferred maintenance projects and other facility upgrades.
For example, equipment that often gets left behind in routine maintenance is non-critical base building infrastructure such as fans, HVAC, and some electrical systems. Parking lots and rooftops are also examples of critical infrastructure that degrade much more quickly without routine maintenance. Deferred maintenance projects for these systems can actually present opportunities for “supercharged” projects that ensure positive net present value and guaranteed payback periods. This could look like fixing the asphalt and sealcoating your parking lot before installing a solar carport, or addressing essential backlogged HVAC repairs while adding new variable-frequency drive controls.
We look to incorporate all approved deferred maintenance projects into our own work scope and ensure that our portfolio of recommendations provide tangible returns. We incorporate all relevant tax credits, depreciation, and subsidies to ensure that projects are cash flow positive from year one. The savings from other projects can be used to offset the costs of deferred maintenance projects.
Caught in the dreaded deferred maintenance cycle? It’s time to reframe your thinking to holistic system upgrades - so we can help you break out of the cycle, once and for all.
Contact us to get started.
At Promise Energy, we don’t believe that one size fits all. We pride ourselves in designing and installing customized energy solutions that provide the greatest long-term value and energy control for our customers.
