First Private Residential Estate Adopts URA’s “Guidelines and Templates for preparing Maintenance Manual for Residential and Composite Buildings” to Develop Periodic Maintenance Plans
It is known that the risk of bid-rigging increases with the scale, complexity and contract values of building rehabilitation projects. However, if owners of buildings or estates formulate and implement preventive maintenance plans early on, the rehabilitation work could be scaled down and split into smaller works, and tendering exercises could be conducted in stages, thereby mitigating the risk of bid-rigging arising from significant repair costs.
As early as 2017, I foresaw that the issue of ageing buildings is getting worse and recognised the increasing importance of conducting regular maintenance work in a timely manner. In light of this, the Urban Renewal Authority (URA) has developed a preventive maintenance strategy to address the issue in three aspects. This includes compiling the "Guidelines and Templates for Preparing Maintenance Manual for Residential and Composite Buildings" (The Guidelines and Templates) according to the up-to-date legal requirements on building maintenance and drawing from the successful experiences of well-maintained large estates, for perusal by building owners and property management companies (PMC).
The Guidelines and Templates have consolidated various maintenance items and required work scopes for different parts of the common areas in typical buildings. They offer clear guidance to owners and PMC on works items that require regular inspection and maintenance, the maintenance cycle and inspection methods for common facilities, as well as the budget involved. This, in turn, facilitates the early preparation of the necessary resources.
Compared to the corrective maintenance approach adopted by the majority of buildings and estates, the Guidelines and Templates, developed based on the concept of preventive maintenance, offer three key advantages:
1. Detailing inspection and repair methods for common areas.
The Guidelines and Templates include not only 12 types of building structural elements and common facilities listed in the Guidelines for Deed of Mutual Covenant (DMC) but also extend the coverage to 20 types of common facilities, such as communal car parks, clubhouses, security systems, and indoor common areas like wall finishes of the ground-floor lobbies, corridors and rear staircase. This will facilitate the development of a more comprehensive and extensive maintenance plan.
2. Specifying the service life of structural components and common facilities.
There is a section in the Guidelines and Templates that requires consultants appointed by owners or PMC to, based on the information provided by the maintenance contractors, fill in details of the facilities used in the buildings or estates including the place of origin, maintenance cycle, expected service life, and other technical aspects of the facilities. With this available information, a 10-year maintenance plan can be well prepared. The Owners' Corporation (OC) can then convene timely discussions for the necessary maintenance or replacement works at different stages, and implement these works accordingly.
3. Providing a template for financial budgeting of maintenance work.
The URA team has embedded a budget form with various pre-set financial formulas in the Guidelines and Templates. The consultants can figure out the estimated total project costs by simply inputting the inspection and repair costs of each project into these formulas. This enables PMC to calculate the funding amount to be borne by each household based on the number of units and undivided/management shares in the building. This will facilitate the formation of a contribution proposal for the maintenance fund for further discussion and implementation by the owners.
The URA team has conducted consultations to prepare the Guidelines and Templates at various stages. After consolidating the feedback received, the team will fine-tune the relevant content and standardise the Guidelines and Templates accordingly. The URA plans to upload the finalised version onto the URA’s Building Rehabilitation Platform website in the fourth quarter of this year for access by owners and PMC.
In addition to formulating the Guidelines and Templates, the URA has also applied preventive maintenance in its self-developed projects, and launched a new Preventive Maintenance Subsidy Scheme (PMSS) in April this year. The PMSS subsidises OCs in appointing Authorised Persons to prepare a maintenance manual and develop a 10-year maintenance plan with estimated expenses and establishing a special fund with regular contributions for the maintenance plan. To incentivise owners to make regular contributions to the special fund, the URA will provide a one-off incentive subsidy after three consecutive years of contributions. As of August, five PMSS applications have been received, covering more than 4,200 residential units in single-block buildings and large estates with ages ranging from over 30 to about 50 years.
The URA will continue to promote and enhance the public awareness of “preventive maintenance”. However, if all the promotional and encouragement measures have been exhausted without achieving the desired outcome of owners autonomously organising regular maintenance, then it will be time for the Government, the industry and the public to discuss whether a change in legislation is required. Such legislation may include mandating owners to formulate periodic maintenance plans for their buildings, budget for, and contribute to the maintenance fund, thereby urging them to take responsibility for the upkeep of their properties.