Roof leaks have a profound impact on your building and the costly damage a leak can cause. Interior roof leaking can also result in a litany of expenses and legal exposures to you and your company that can be nothing short of heart stopping.
Some of the hidden costs of a roof leak are:
Downtime of production areas—lost revenues
Lost use of space—lost revenues
Tenant complaints, lost use of income, lawsuits
Slip and fall accidents and legal claims
Mold and mildew problems resulting in air quality issues and clean-up expenses
Employee morale and productivity issues
Regular and overtime labor expenses for clean-up and repair work resulting from roof leaks
The problem in most companies is that they do not track these consequential damage items as being roofing related expenses. However, close examination of the origin of these costs is likely to reveal that they were incurred as a direct result of a faulty roofing system.
The costs of these consequential damages can represent a significantly larger dollar amount than the annualized budgeted roof maintenance work that was originally needed, but not performed. To sum it up, companies are reactive, not proactive when it comes to roofing needs. This can easily be changed with the addition of an annual maintenance program.
Deferred Maintenance
Most American businesses have adopted a strategy of deferred building maintenance rather than a proactive maintenance approach. While this approach can definitely reduce short-term maintenance budgets, it always translates into increased maintenance and capital expense budgets for roofing failures due to neglect. In essence, companies can “pay now or pay later” when it comes to their roofs.
Reactive Maintenance cost 4X more than Proactive Maintenance.
The interesting comparison is that with deferred roof maintenance, companies will always pay more than they would if they scheduled regular roof maintenance into their facility maintenance/management budgets. This represents a paradigm shift away from Band-Aid fixes toward long-term care and maintenance to maximize the sustainable life of the roof.
Clearly, without considering any of the costs associated with the consequential damages or legal liabilities issues, adopting a proactive roof maintenance and management program will allow most companies to save significant bottom-line dollars on an annual basis. And executives used to think that roofs couldn’t make their companies any money.
