The instinct to manage building systems reactively — to call an engineer only when something breaks — is understandable. It feels like cost control. In practice, it is one of the most expensive approaches to building maintenance that an estate operator can take.
The Emergency Premium
Emergency callout rates for M&E engineering typically run at 1.5–2.5× standard day rates, plus premium mileage and, frequently, premium parts sourcing costs when standard components are not available and a quick fix is needed. A fault that would cost AED 837 to address during a scheduled visit can easily cost AED 1,628–500 as an emergency callout — and that is before accounting for any secondary damage caused by the fault going undetected.
Secondary Damage
A chilled water leak detected by a monitoring sensor and resolved in four hours causes a damp patch. The same leak undetected for two weeks causes structural damage, mould remediation requirements, potential ceiling void damage and — depending on the building — potential impact on tenants below. The cost escalation from a AED 930 fix to a AED 69,750 remediation project is not unusual.
Shortened Asset Life
M&E equipment maintained to manufacturer specification typically achieves 90–100% of its design life. Equipment that is maintained only reactively — run until failure, repaired, run again — typically achieves 60–75% of design life. For a AED 186,000 chiller plant with a design life of 20 years, the difference between proper maintenance and reactive-only management is roughly 5–7 years of additional service life — equivalent to AED 46,500–14,000 of capital deferral.
The True Cost Comparison
When emergency premiums, secondary damage costs and accelerated replacement costs are aggregated and compared against the cost of a properly structured PPM contract, the economics of reactive maintenance consistently fail to stack up. The conversation about maintenance provision should not be about whether you can afford a maintenance contract — it should be about whether you can afford not to have one.
