Many of us may at least pass large office buildings or office blocks in city and town centres on a regular basis or perhaps even work in one without ever giving a great deal of thought to how the huge task of maintenance is carried out. The reality in most cases is that a Building Services Maintenance company is hired by the Managing Agency, M & E Consulting Agency, Facilities Manager or the building owner or operator to take care of all aspects the ongoing maintenance.
It is likely that the Building Services Maintenance company is chosen because it has a good reputation of maintaining other offices and commercial buildings of many kinds, perhaps in the same town, city close geographical area.
The Facilities Manager of the office building is likely to be the person who is the main contact for the maintenance company. Larger office blocks for example are likely to house many different individual offices and with many different companies in them. As well as the general maintenance aspects of the building as a whole, the Facilities Manager of the building needs to be aware that many of these different companies will make different demands upon the building’s systems and will have different energy requirements.
Although each commercial building will be in a different condition there are likely to be a number of common areas that the Building Services Maintenance company will focus on. For example the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems (HVAC) in an office block are not only important to maintain in terms of providing the correct level of comfort for the building’s occupants, but also from an energy efficiency and money saving point of view. It is likely that older systems which may not always have been subject to regular maintenance routines could be less efficient as well as being less effective.
Other areas of an office block that will typically be subject to maintenance work from a Commercial Building Maintenance company include the boilers, the lifts, the lightening lighting, water and its hygiene and quality monitoring, fire extinguishers, access control, lightening conductors and all off the vital mechanical and electrical services in the building.
High quality planned preventative maintenance schedules operated by the Building Services Maintenance company are one of the main lines of defence against the building developing any major and disruptive operating problems in the future. Other services offered by the maintenance company often include breakdown & emergency call-out and support from mobile and static technicians in-house.