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Definitional Issues and Potential Revisions
FASAB Standard Number 6, as amended, is intended to apply to a broad class of property, plant, and equipment, including buildings, vehicles, weapons systems, and stewardship land. These classes of assets have life cycles ranging from a few to 50 or more years and substantial variations in characteristics, complexity, and uses. In the case of facilities, some of these assets may be historic in nature. By developing definitions intended to apply to several classes of assets, difficulties arise in applying them to specific categories. Thus, one difficulty for agencies in complying with FASAB Standard Number 6, as amended, as it applies to facilities (real property) has been the use of terms that are not widely used in the facilities management field, that are defined very broadly, or that do not reflect how facility maintenance and repair programs and practices are implemented in federal agencies.
ISSUES
Maintenance
Maintenance is defined by FASAB Standard Number 6, as amended, as:
the act of keeping fixed assets in acceptable condition. It includes preventive maintenance, normal repairs, replacement of parts and structural components, and other activities needed to preserve the asset so that it continues to provide acceptable services and achieves its expected life. Maintenance excludes activities aimed at expanding the capacity of an asset or otherwise upgrading it to serve needs different from, or significantly greater than, those originally intended (FASAB, 1996).
This definition of maintenance treats repairs as a subset of maintenance. In facilities management literature and general practice, maintenance and repairs are treated as separate activities with different objectives. For example, maintenance has been
