Preventive Maintenance: Why Should Congregations Care?

Congregations are sometimes guilty of viewing their physical facility chiefly as a budget-eating monster, and often look to facilities maintenance as a prime area for cutting costs.  One casualty of this approach may be regular preventive maintenance. 

Tim Cool of Cool Solutions Group in Charlotte defines preventive maintenance as, “a series of actions that are performed on either a time-based schedule or a schedule based on ‘run-time’ or use. These actions are designed to detect, preclude or mitigate degradation of a system or facility.”  He and other facilities experts agree that regular preventive maintenance offers substantial cost savings to congregations over the "fix it when it breaks" model, and also represents much better stewardship of physical resources. 

If a congregation wants to include regular preventive maintenance as part of its stewardship of God’s resources, where can they start?  Fortunately there are excellent resources to help, and some of them are free.

The National Association of Church Business Administration (NACBA) has several white papers available for free download at http://www.nacba.net/Pages/Products.aspx?OrderCategoryId=5.  Tim Cool authors two:  “Church Facilities Management: The Facts” and “Dimes vs. Dollars,” which explains how congregations will benefit from regular preventive maintenance.  Also available is a sample Preventive Maintenance checklist, a research project of the National Association of Church Facilities Managers authored by Executive Director Vanoy Hooker.  If sprinkler systems are a specific concern for your congregation, Church Mutual also offers two short articles in its latest newsletter, Risk Reporter: http://www.churchmutual.com/riskreporter/index.php?id=52#Risk.

Nancy Armstrong

Finance Director