As a business park includes many office buildings on the same land, it is imperative for profitability that a maintenance plan is established and implemented. The business park planner will have the site built on inexpensive suburban land. Therefore the buildings are low rise or single level.
The planner will be maintaining a group of office buildings formed in a single complex. Subcategories on the site will include landscaped areas, roads, parking spaces, and the actual buildings. Key categories to consider in explaining maintenance planning are such activities as basic maintenance, security, and landscape maintenance.
Points for consideration when assessing the costings will be whether the occupants of the park propose to trade directly with the public or whether the corporations leasing or owning office space in the park are closed to the public. Should the tenants or owners include light industry or other forms of manufacture, the planners must consider the special maintenance planning needs of these business types in addition to the office-based businesses.
With a planner it must strive to gain an advanced understanding of the business park’s occupants and their goals. It is essential that the planner provides a strategy to the business owners for the future of the business park and its maintenance. The planner must provide individual projects to assist with the implementation of the overall strategy.
One marker of successful planning will be a minimum of empty spaces in the business park. The benchmark should be somewhere around the five percent mark. For maintenance planning purposes, the planner may identify zones of economic activity inside the business park. These may include distribution depots, instrument manufacturers, chemical services, engineering firms, property management, textile producers, and the like. With several different types of trade contained inside the park, the planner must divide the park into zones of employment.
The types of land and its use surrounding the park must be considered by the planner in the process of business park maintenance planning. The planner’s goals should enhance the businesses’ ability to employ, and the planner’s activities must create new jobs through continuous planning and development of the site.
The complex will make gains by employing quality contractors to survey the scope of the projects required by the planner. We will benefit by using neatly uniformed personnel to maintain the grounds of the business park.
Although we may employ staff for maintaining the complex as the need arises, the greatest advantage will come from executing a contract for continuous maintenance, and review the terms of the contract each year. Rather than calling for assistance with a smashed window, that window would be replenished automatically at a much lower rate, together with the rest of the ongoing maintenance requirements of the business park.
Most of the tasks of financial benefit to the business park and its occupants develop continuously such as mowing, cleaning car parks, cleaning paths, edging borders, pruning trees, pruning shrubs, pruning bushes, cleaning litter, removing rubbish, cutting hedges, tree surgery, planting shrubs, planting trees, spraying weed control chemicals, removing Autumn leaves, and the application of grit in Winter.
The business park will benefit through having supplies of consumables and appropriate machinery, a fully fitted workshop onsite, a stock of spare parts, employees skilled in tasks such as welding and fabrication.
As time passes building refurbishment will occasionally become part of the maintenance routine in the business park. To focus on the mechanical and electrical components of the refurbishment will pay back dividends in the long term. Mechanical and electrical maintenance may outweigh other aspects of refurbishment both in terms of time and money. Shrewd investment in these factors is a benefit which cannot be overemphasized.
The planner’s project management team should be expert in CAD design, heating, ventilating, air conditioning, power, lighting, plumbing, partitions, flooring, ceilings, and decorating. Should relocation become necessary the relocation team may provide high level assistance in transporting any heavy plant machinery, production machinery, production lines, and manufacturing facilities. The elements of the process at which the team must have expert skills are such areas as project management, decommissioning, transportation, and installation.
I trust this brief summary has provided some insight into the many benefits of continuous maintenance of the business park. Having a team on site all year round who know the terrain will give us a greater strategic advantage over calling in contractors when an item or items have been damaged or fallen into costly disrepair.