Facilities management
An owners’ management company looks after the common parts of its block, and sooner or later the roof, the lifts, the fire doors, the corridors and the car park all need money spent on them. A sinking fund plan sets those works out by year so the board can see what is coming. In Fidrel the plan is the Planned maintenance programme: the Irish template suggests building elements and typical lifespans for a residential block, you enter quantities and costs, and Fidrel shows what each year is likely to cost, as a basis for the directors’ decisions on the fund.
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When the amount put into the fund is rolled forward from last year’s budget, nobody can point to the works it is meant to pay for. Owners who ask why the figure is what it is deserve a list of elements, years and costs.
In a block built in one go, the lifts, the roof covering and the windows tend to wear out within a few years of each other. Laid out year by year, that bunching shows long before the invoices land; in a single total it stays hidden.
A survey commissioned at handover or for one AGM is rarely opened again. Works get done early, put off or dropped, and the figures drift away from the building that is actually standing there.
The Irish template covers four building types: residential, commercial, public sector, and industrial and warehousing. Its residential list reads like the common parts of an apartment block. It suggests replacing common entrance doors after 30 years, redecorating common areas every 15, replacing common area lighting after 20, modernising lifts after 30, replacing fire doors after 30 and replacing the intercom and access control after 15, alongside the roof, external walls, balconies, land drainage and heating. Soil stacks and rising mains are counted per apartment. Each action sits under a building element and is a replacement, a repair, a service or an inspection. Given the year built, an action with a lifespan is placed in the year that lifespan runs out, and one already overdue lands in the programme’s first year. No prices come with the template, and the lifespans are typical values to be checked against the building.
Fidrel gives each year its cost. Every priced action counts its quantity times its unit cost, or its fixed amount, in each year it falls due, and the year’s total is the sum of those. The figures at the top show the whole programme, the next five years and this year, and the cost per year chart shows where the heavy years are. That is what a board and its property manager can take into the annual budget: the works the common parts need, year by year, at the prices you entered. How much to hold in the sinking fund, and how it is shared among the owners, remains the board’s decision, taken with its advisers. Actions you have not priced count as nothing in the totals, so a programme with gaps understates the need.
Step 1
Give the property a name, the year it was built, the building type Residential, the start year and the horizon, and the template fills in elements, actions and typical lifespans.
Step 2
For each action enter a quantity and a unit cost, or a fixed amount each time, and move a first year wherever your own surveyor’s findings differ from the template.
Step 3
The figures at the top give the whole programme, the next five years and the current year, and a chart sets the costs of the years side by side.
Step 4
Mark works done with their date and actual cost, defer what was put off to a later year, and skip what turned out not to be needed.
Take a block of 40 apartments built in 2008 and a programme from 2027 over ten years. The template places the common area lighting in 2028, twenty years after the block was finished; enter 120 fittings at €180 each and 2028 carries €21,600 for it. Redecorating the common areas fell due in 2023, so it lands in 2027, the first year of the programme, and with a fixed amount of €28,000 it adds that sum to 2027 and comes round again in 2042, beyond a ten-year horizon. The entrance doors and the lift modernisation fall in 2038, which a ten-year programme never reaches: choose a horizon of 30 years and they appear. All the sums are illustrative; yours come from your own survey and quotes.
Once a year, after the works season, bring the programme into line with what happened on the building. Mark an action Done and enter the date and what it actually cost: that figure replaces the planned one for the year. Mark it Deferred and pick a later year: the cost leaves the original year, shows up in the new one labelled with where it came from, and can be moved again. Mark it Skipped and the year carries nothing for it. Works carried out in a year they were not planned for are shown and counted too, so the programme becomes a record of the building as well as a forecast.
When the board turns to next year’s budget, the programme can hand over that year’s works as an estimate. Make an estimate of the year opens a draft named after the programme and the year, with a line for each action planned or done in it, priced from your quantities and unit costs or your fixed amounts. Where the programme sits in a project’s facilities management, that estimate can be approved as the year’s operating budget, and the year’s supplier invoices are then followed against it, line by line, month by month and by supplier.
When facilities management is set up in a project on the Irish site, its folder template includes 13 Asset register and sinking fund, with folders for the condition survey, the building investment fund report and the sinking fund plan, and 14 Property management, with the service charge budget and the OMC documents and house rules. The surveyor’s report and the board’s papers can then sit in the same project as the programme they inform.
You can draw up a programme in your own Workspace, before the management company has a project in Fidrel, and later copy or move it, with its actions and every mark, into the facilities management of a project where you may write. Inside a project, read access follows the whole of facilities management, and only members who may write there can change it; in a Workspace nobody but you sees it. Anyone who may edit the programme can export all of it to Excel, or the years on screen as a PDF with Fidrel’s document head, for the AGM pack or the agent’s file.
Fidrel does not write a building investment fund report, and it does not replace a surveyor’s inspection of the building. Fidrel divides nothing among the owners and collects no service charges; it shows what the works cost each year. You enter every quantity and cost, and the lifespans are typical values from the Irish template, not findings about your building. Costs stay at the prices you enter: Fidrel adds no inflation. The programme raises no work orders by itself and books no contractors. A due action becomes a fault report only when you choose Create a fault report from the action.
Your trial applies to your first own project and starts when that project is created. No card required. Afterwards, choose card or invoice to continue.
The project system of the future connects people, documents and decisions. Discover the thinking behind Fidrel.
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On site, answers need to be close at hand. Fidrel displays DWG drawings in your mobile browser, within the project’s document structure.
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When everyone can see the next step, moving the project forward becomes easier. Fidrel brings activities, dates and reported progress together in a shared Gantt view.
Read moreFacilities management
Anything else on your mind? We are happy to help.
Talk to usNo. It gives the cost of the works for the whole block, year by year. How that is shared among the owners, and what goes into the service charge budget, is decided by the board with its advisers.
The Irish template suggests ten years, which it describes as usual for owners’ management companies and landlords. You can choose a horizon between five and sixty years, and big items such as lifts and roof coverings may only appear on a longer one.
Yes. Enter the surveyor’s quantities, costs and years against the actions, add any action the report names that the template lacks, and keep the report itself in the facilities management folders.
No. It also covers commercial, public sector, and industrial and warehousing buildings, each with actions and lifespans of its own. The residential list is the one written around the common parts of a block.
In a project, everyone who may read all of facilities management can open it, and those who may write there can change it. A programme kept in your own Workspace stays private to you until you copy or move it.
No. Every cost stays at the figure you enter. Review the unit costs when you bring the programme up to date each year, so that the later years reflect current prices.
