Cost of Deferred Maintenance on College Campuses
Boxes are packed. Laundry baskets are filled with clothes. Incoming freshmen are ready to descend on college dorms with an eagerness unseen since last September. And, all you can think about are the piling costs of deferred maintenance.
In 2013, American School and University magazine released a staggering report on the ramifications of both K-12 schools and universities deferring maintenance costs and putting operations on the backburner. The end game? Colleges and universities across the country are saddled with up to $50 billion of deferred maintenance costs. The culprit? Campus spending averages a measly 0.2% of school budgets for on-going maintenance.
Not ready to make the jump to regular maintenance of your HVAC and mechanicals yet? Consider another striking statistic in the report: for every $1 of deferred maintenance costs, schools and universities will require $4 of capital renewal needs in the future. Could that really be true? Could postponing maintenance quadruple the cost further down the line? School Dude wanted to find out. Later that year, the community blogger and several facility renewal experts took the report a step further and checked out the math behind the magazine’s report. And, it checks out. Based on annual capital repair costs, budgets allocated for maintenance, and the effects on system lifecycle, they found that the 4:1 spend ratio proves out.
Yet, it is not all doom and gloom. Administrations and facility teams who rely on maintenance agreements and world-class service organizations like Daikin’s are setting a different course. Let us be the experts on your system. Count on our teams to handle the maintenance, the annual condenser cleaning, the seasonal startup as those eager, bright eyed and Snapchat-savvy freshmen invade your impeccably clean, quiet dormitories.
Want even further assurance you’re doing the most you can to avoid those deferred maintenance costs? Check out Daikin’s portfolio of award-winning Intelligent Solutions®. With secure remote monitoring, you can check your Fantasy Football scores in the library stacks all while monitoring over 150 data points of your HVAC equipment.
Head here to find your local Daikin service center. Our factory-trained technicians will save you time and money, keeping you advised of what is going on with your equipment, avoiding unnecessary and expensive deferred maintenance costs in the future.
