5 tips for essential maintenance and upkeep for commercial properties

Property maintenance is essential for all commercial buildings. If you don’t keep up with it, the building will look shabby and be less appealing for staff and customers, which can in turn hinder your business.

Maintenance can be anything from small repairs that keep a building functioning at its peak, to the upkeep of vital services depending on the lease you sign. Whatever it is in your case, completing the required maintenance is vital to keep everything running smoothly and to prevent significant problems from occurring in the future.

This guide contains five key tips to help you navigate the essential maintenance and upkeep of a commercial property.

Why is maintenance so important for commercial properties?

Keeping a close eye on the maintenance of your commercial property is one of your most important responsibilities. Doing so will benefit you in the following ways:

• Retain staff and customers – Happy staff and customers will stay with you for the long term. Keeping your premises in a good state will help to ensure that your business is a place where people want to be.
• Save money – By taking care of maintenance and upkeep on a rolling basis, you stop small problems from developing into bigger ones which will cost you more money
• Minimise risk – A well maintained commercial property will be a safer working environment and reduce your potential liabilities

While your exact maintenance plan will vary depending on your space, all of them will benefit from regular maintenance. So, read on for our five main tips for commercial property maintenance…

1 – Check everything regularly

Scheduling a regular walk through of the building every few months is the basis of good maintenance practice for any commercial property. While this does not have to be the most thorough inspection possible, doing this will let you see possible problems early and allow you to take action to fix them ahead of time.

As mentioned previously, one of the most important reasons to carry out maintenance is to stop small problems growing and becoming costly ones in the future. Carrying out regular checks is your best tool to do this and save yourself money and time.

2 – Make a list of routine maintenance, complete it regularly

There is a whole list of tasks which apply to all commercial properties that can and should be carried out regularly. Unfortunately, these are often the ones that are most easily put off or ignored.

Some examples of these are checking smoke alarms, cleaning air conditioning and ventilation filters, cleaning windows and more. All of these can seem like small jobs, but if you let them pile up through inaction then you will suddenly be faced with a long list of incomplete tasks that all need doing.

Furthermore, in the case of fire alarm testing and cleaning the ventilation, these have a real effect on the safety of your commercial property and you should not take a risk with them in the first place.

3 – Be smart, identify busiest areas

While it is true that you can never truly finish the maintenance of a commercial property, you can cut your workload down somewhat by being smart and focussing on the busiest areas.

Places like the entrance, large corridors, kitchens and bathrooms will see a higher than average amount of traffic. If you work out the areas that everyone uses and focus a lot of maintenance time on those, you will be getting the most benefit for the least time spent, and everyone will be happier for it.

4 – Don’t put off repairs

If you have found something that needs repairing during your regular inspections, don’t put off fixing it. Letting smaller issues slip your mind is easily done, but you should make sure to fix things as soon as possible before they worsen.

A great example of this is mould. If you see mould and don’t take action to mitigate it, you are asking for trouble. It can do major damage to your premises, and it may indicate either a health risk or deeper structural damage to the building. By addressing it immediately, you can stop it getting worse – which it will continue to do if you ignore it.

5 – Use a professional management service

Property maintenance is a lot of ongoing work. No matter how much you do, there will always be more, and the chances are that it will occur at the least convenient time. By using a professional property management agent – or renting a commercial space from a professional provider in the first place – you can run your business without worrying about taking care of the maintenance as well.

A great example of this in action is the range of serviced offices supplied by FigFlex which include everything your business needs. They work with you to make the place home and offer contracts as short as three months in some cases. Best of all, as a fully serviced office, FigFlex take care of all maintenance on your behalf.

Get in touch with the FigFlex team today and find your perfect, maintained office space by clicking here.

Property maintenance is a lot of work, so you might consider hiring a professional. You might find a single company that handles all the maintenance, including hiring subcontractors, or you could look for various contractors to complete the work for you. Hiring experts to handle the jobs is the best way to ensure they’re completed safely.

These tips provide you with a framework for keeping your commercial building in a functional state. Tenants should be aware of these tips as well to ensure their landlords are holding up their end of the bargain.