Classification of Maintenance Costs in Scottish Housing Associations

Abstract

The maintenance manager is frequently presented with the task of maintaining many properties over an extended period, with limited resources. To use these limited resources wisely, the manager must be able to not only control costs for maintenance but also minimize the management effort required to address that maintenance. This paper proposes that by determining the nature of those maintenance costs, the managerial effort required for cost control can be limited. Five major associations were studied to identify the sources of their maintenance costs and establish the relationship between the nature of maintenance costs incurred, work types, and frequency of jobs. The result of this study is a method of classifying trades according to three criteria that allow the identification of trends in maintenance work and the allocation of managerial effort according to the characteristics of the work. A method for identifying significant sources of maintenance costs and determining the appropriate managerial system for each type of job is proposed.