Deferred Maintenance Reporting for Federal Facilities: Meeting the Requirements of Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board Standard Number 6, as Amended (2001)
Chapter: ISSUES RELATED TO DEFINITIONS
any recommendations for reporting deferred maintenance for facilities or advocated specific positions. 4
ISSUES RELATED TO DEFINITIONS
One of the difficulties that federal agencies have found in complying with Standard Number 6, as amended, as it relates to facilities, has been the use of terms that are not typically used in the facilities management field, that are loosely defined, and/or that do not accurately reflect facility maintenance and repair practices. Of specific concern were the FASAB (1996) definitions for maintenance and deferred maintenance, which are:
maintenance—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.
deferred maintenance—maintenance that was not performed when it should have been or was scheduled to be and which, therefore, is put off or delayed for a future period.
These definitions are intended to apply to a broad class of assets, including facilities, vehicles, weapons system, and other types of property, plant, and equipment. 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. When applying these general definitions to specific classes of assets, problems arise. For facilities the treatment of repairs as a subset of maintenance, the use of the term “expected life,” and references to “originally intended uses” were identified as problematic.
The committee has proposed for consideration the following revised definitions that it believes better reflect current facility management practices for maintenance and repair:
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