Maintenance is big business

Property Management

ISSN: 0263-7472

Article publication date: 1 October 2000

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Keywords

Citation

(2000), "Maintenance is big business", Property Management, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/pm.2000.11318dab.013

Publisher

:

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2000, MCB UP Limited


Maintenance is big business

Maintenance is big business

Keyword: Maintenance costs

Total expenditure on maintenance in the UK was £4.2 billion in 1998, according to an estimate prepared by BMI in BMI Special Report 286: The Economic Significance of Maintenance.

At constant prices, maintenance expenditure rose 2.4 per cent between 1997 and 1998. The replacement value of the total stock of buildings and works also rose by 2 per cent in 1998 to £2,095 billion.

Alan Cowan, BMI Technical Consultant, commented that:

the overall significance of the maintenance market is often underestimated as it is made up of minor expenditures from every organisation and individual that owns property.

Maintenance as a percentage of capital stock remained unchanged at 1.87 per cent in 1998. This figure is widely used as a rule of thumb to estimate maintenance expenditure, but probably underestimates the maintenance requirement because of the levels of backlog maintenance.

Housing maintenance, consisting of contractors' maintenance and expenditure on DIY goods, accounts for 56 per cent of total expenditure (see Figure 4).

Figure 4. Total maintenance expenditure 1998

Maintenance expenditure now represents over 5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product and is increasing as an input to economic growth of the country.

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