Property Maintenance Operative: Roles, Responsibilities, and Reporting

This report delves into the multifaceted role of a Property Maintenance Operative (PMO), emphasizing their crucial responsibilities in ensuring building safety and quality. It explores the various tasks PMOs undertake, including preventive, corrective, and predictive maintenance, while highlighting the importance of maintaining accurate records for inspections, cost planning, and knowledge transfer. The report also examines the organizational structure of a property maintenance service provider, L&Q property, illustrating the flow of information and responsibilities. Furthermore, it presents a specific job report scenario involving a damaged cable, outlining the necessary actions, scope of work, and reporting procedures, concluding that external expertise is required for complex electrical issues. The report underscores the significance of PMOs' contributions to building safety and the need for efficient maintenance practices.

Property Maintenance
Operative

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1 ...........................................................................................................................................1
Role of property maintenance operative .....................................................................................1
Need of maintenance records ......................................................................................................2
Job report for damaged cable ......................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The property maintenance operative (PMO) are responsible for optimising the property
conditions so that safety and quality of building can be assured (Pärn, Edwards and Sing, 2017).
The report will discuss various roles and responsibilities of these maintenance operatives and
reporting procedures for their operations.
TASK 1
Role of property maintenance operative
PMO work in the job roles of maintenance assistants, engineeer, and property engineer.
Their role is to ensure the safety and quality of building. These operatives are requried to deliver
satisfactory services to their customers and teams. For this purpose they must be trained and have
knowledge of skills electrical systems, safety and equipment and plumbing systems of building.
In addition to these they are required to have knowledge of organisational safety, procedures,
health and safety policies and needs. The operatives required to complete apprenticeship
programs with transferable skills along with facilities management and electrical or plumbing
knowledge. PMO comply with the safety policies of organisations or building (Kamaruzzaman
and et.al., 2016). These operatives are also responsible for maintaining water hygiene, safe
distribution of electricity. Along with the maintenance these operatives also maintain and keep
records of of building safety and related aspects so that information can be shared accurately.
PMO performs various types of maintenance tasks which are as follows:
Preventive maintenance tasks: These tasks includes periodic inspection of the property so that
small issues can be fixed and nothing breaks down. It includes tasks such as repairing, walls,
roof, guttering, fitting skirting boards, tiles and hanging doors.
Corrective tasks: In this type of maintenance task performed by PMO, services or property
attributes are repaired which needs maintenance. For instance it includes reconstruction activities
of walls, masonry work like laying slabs, vinyl flooring, replacing glass, erecting fences and
external steps.
Predictive tasks: This maintenance tasks includes monitoring of building safety so that risk
factors can be addressed or repaired. It includes tasks such as minor electrical tasks, security
check of fire and electrical appliances so that accidents or hazards can be eliminated.
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PMO can work independently or within facilities management service providers. L &Q
property is one of the leading residential service provider in UK. It provides construction and
maintenance services across London. The organisational structure of organisation is as follows:
(Source: Construction company organisational chart- Introduction and example, 2016)
The organisational structure shows that organisation structure has managers for various
departments such as project, purchasing and engineering. Some departments such as marketing,
HR and finance also have directors. All these departments are headed by general manager. For
each of the project along with the site engineers there are safety and quality assistants which
provide the records to documenters and surveyors so that property can be maintained.
Need of maintenance records
It is important to create and safely store maintenance records so that routine inspections
can be performed. This inspection helps PMO to repair minor damages on time before they take
the form of severe damages. It is also necessary for the organisation to store these records so that
capital expenditure and budget can be planned and analysed (Thomson and et.al., 2019). This
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Illustration 1: Organisational chart of L &Q property, UK

planning is helpful in enhancing efficiency and minimising cost. Another important reason for
maintaining such records is that when history is recorded it becomes easy for PMO to transfer
the work to next individual or team. It is required for the organisation to assess the status of
various maintenance operations and needs of the property so that future safety decisions can be
improved. For this purpose PMO essentially maintain their records. For the safety compliances
these records are often kept for long time and require efficient management and storage. The
negligence and errors in these records can serve as severe threat to building safety and
compliances. The records which are maintained by the PMO are refereed for future references.
Thus any kind of human error or negligence can provide inaccurate base for the future repairing
and maintenance actions. Due to this reason maintenance records are maintained properly to
make process cost and time efficient and safe.
In the given organisational structure it has been also observed that copies of these
maintenance records are also provided to safety supervisor, site engineer, cost estimator and
surveyors (Bröchner, Haugen and Lindkvist, 2019). These supervisors and cost estimators
analyses the actual cause of the problem so that in future such issues can be prevented. The cost
estimators also provides an estimated analysis of operational cost to make it more efficient in
terms of quality and cost.
Job report for damaged cable
Job report
Problem: The residual current device has tripping issue and thus power is not available. On
analysis and testing it is found that cable in the wall is damaged.
Actions need to be taken: As PMO must have knowledge of electrical distribution and safe
repair and installation of electrical devices. They are responsible for replacing or repairing
damaged sockets, fuses, lighting and plugs. Cable is damaged thus it requires to be replaced
completely.
Scope of work: The work is not in the scope of PMO as it requires complete knowledge of
electrical system and cable infrastructure of the building. Thus it is not possible for PMO to
accomplish this task.
Responsible authority to solve the issue: For addressing the issue electrician, carpenter and
structural engineer is required so that cable can be changed and electrical system can be
replaced and wall can be again repaired to improve the building safety and structure.
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Reporting authority: The issue will be reported to site supervisor who will ask surveyor to
conduct a more detailed analysis of the site. On the basis of survey cost will be estimated and
quality and inspection team will coordinate with electrical engineer to address the issue.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that for safety of buildings and property routine maintenance
operations must be conducted with efficiency. Thus maintenance operatives must maintain
proper records and understand their responsibilities towards specific job or tasks so that building
safety is not compromised.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bröchner, J., Haugen, T. and Lindkvist, C., 2019. Shaping tomorrow’s facilities
management. Facilities. 37(7/8). pp.366-380.
Kamaruzzaman, S.N. and et.al., 2016. Assessing the readiness of facilities management
organizations in implementing knowledge management systems. Journal of Facilities
Management. 14(1). pp.69-83.
Pärn, E.A., Edwards, D.J. and Sing, M.C., 2017. The building information modelling trajectory
in facilities management: A review. Automation in construction. 75. pp.45-55.
Thomson, G. and et.al., 2019, May. BIM Related Innovation in Healthcare Precinct Design and
Facilities Management. In 10th Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and
Organization (pp. 455-462). Emerald Publishing Limited.
Online
Construction company organisational chart- Introduction and example. 2016. [Online].
Accessed through <http://www.orgcharting.com/construction-company-org-chart/>
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