Deferred Maintenance - The Use of Parametrics for Estimating Maintenance Costs

Facilities managers must know and understand the condition of their facilities including the estimated cost of their deferred maintenance (DM). If managers know their facility conditions and DM cost by facility system, individual facility, type of facility, site and for an Agency or Department, they will best be able to budget for and prioritize their facilities repair efforts.

Federal agencies have struggled to find an efficient and effective method to produce accurate DM cost estimates and facility condition assessments. In the late 1980's Congress focused attention on the rising levels of backlog of maintenance and repair (BMAR) reported by the Department of Defense (DoD). Despite a decade of maintenance and repair funding increases to reduce maintenance backlogs, DoD's BMAR estimate increased in the early 1990's. DoD installations reacted to the increased funding by spending more resources on studies and inspections to further increase their BMAR estimates (in hopes that even more funding would be forthcoming). This result weakened DoD's credibility with Congress, and has been a source of concern over the last decade, as well as being costly and time consuming.

The Federal Facilities Council (FFC) Standing Committee on Operations and Maintenance completed a study and issued a report to identify issues related to the reporting of DM for facilities. The study, Deferred Maintenance Reporting for Federal Facilities: Meeting the Requirements of Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board Standard Number 6, as Amended, reviewed DM reporting requirements as described in the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) Standard #6 (PDF 202 KB). The study reviewed alternative options for developing credible, consistent, auditable, and cost effective DM estimates