Parking and paving usually represent a much smaller proportion of your operating expenses than utilities, building maintenance or custodial. However, they represent a significant “first impression” to your property and if maintained poorly can create a negative impression of other essential maintenance services.
Facility Managers can have significant impacts on their operating costs by understanding how they are performing relative to others and what opportunities exist to reduce or control paving maintenance costs. The information you need to benchmark is the:
- Cost of your paving maintenance activities
- Area paved in acresM
Step 1—Paving Maintenance Benchmarking Definitions
Maintenance Costs:
Recurring Maintenance Costs—include routine maintenance of roadways, paved areas, and parking areas, including snow plowing, minor repairs, and coating/resealing.
| Function | Internal Costs ($000) | Contractual Costs ($000) |
| E1. Cost includes items done at least once a year, e.g., sweeping: | </td | |
| E2. Cost of snow removal |
Non-Recurring Maintenance Costs—include repairs, coating, patching, marking, etc., using a five year period or other period that would reflect typical annual costs.
| Function | Internal Costs ($000) | Contractual Costs ($000) |
| E3. Enter average annual cost for repairs, etc. | ||
| E4. Indicate period used for annualized average costs (Years) | ||
| E5. Paved area of parking, roads, etc. (acres) | ||
| E5a. What percent of your parking spaces are covered? |
E6. Roads and Pavement Maintenance Philosophy (Select one below to indicate how your site addressed maintenance issues)…
| • | Full time monitoring. Regular inspections performed annually and actions taken. |
| • | Most paving is on a Preventive Building Maintenance schedule. |
| • | Non critical paving is maintained at a very low level. Preventive maintenance and actions taken on critical areas. |
| • | Preventive Maintenance is only accomplished on critical paved areas. |
| • | Most paving is allowed to fail with the exception of safety, regulatory and environmental compliance. |
Step 2—How Do I Compare With Others
Once this information is collected it is easy to normalize the data on a unit cost basis to determine how efficiently your paving maintenance services are provided. For all of our benchmarking studies we use maintenance cost per acre of paving to compare costs with others.
- Each bar on the chart represents a site’s annual maintenance cost per acre of paving
- The median cost for paving maintenance is $1529 per acre
- Note how consistent the normalized data is for these participants. About 70 percent have reported a cost of between $700 and $3000 per acre. There are only a few sites with very low or very maintenance cost rates
Step 3—Using This Information
You’ve completed your paving maintenance data collection and performed the calculations. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself
- Where do you stand on these charts? Are you above the median or below it?
- Could you explain to management why your positions on the charts is just right or needs to be changed?
- What are some of the reasons that explain your positions on the charts?
Step 4—Some Best Practices
- Develop a preventive maintenance plan for managing your paving activities. This photo shows the paving in a parking lot that has not been properly maintained.
- Review your current spending plan and update per engineering recommendations. It is true that approximately $1 spent on paving maintenance at 75% of life expectancy will reduce costs by a factor of 4 or 5 times compared to end of life spending
- Communicate the programs you are implementing with your occupants in a regular and routine way. Paving work will be disruptive and they need to understand why these programs are being implemented.
Metrics from the Facility Managers Round Table (FMRT)
In 2005 there were 92 unique sites in the FMRT with a median size of about 1,450,000 square feet. See the chart below to see how the group looked by industry type.
Participants By Industry Type
Space Metrics
- Space Utilization 430 Gross Square Feet per Occupant
- Cost Metrics
- Utilities $2.17 / GSF
- Custodial $1.33 / Cleanable SF
- Maintenance $1.69 / GSF
- Parking and Paving $1529 / Acre
- Groundskeeping $3405 / Acre
- Security $0.73 / GSF
- Mail Services $0.22 / GSF
- Environmental Health and Safety $0.35 / GSF
- Fixed Costs (Includes: Building, Leasehold Improvements, Furniture/Equipment) $ 3.71 / GSF
Move / Churn Cost Metrics
- Box Move Costs $317 / Person Moved
Customer Satisfaction
- Satisfaction With Overall Facilities Services 3.80 on a 1 to 5 scale
