Maintenance Schedules
What Is A Maintenance Schedule?
Building owners in Victoria are legally required to maintain the Essential Safety Measures (ESM) installed in their building or place of public entertainment. A Maintenance Schedule is the document that makes this obligation practical and manageable: it lists every Essential Safety Measure in a building, its required level of performance, and the frequency and type of maintenance it needs.
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Under Regulations 218 and 222 of the Victorian Building Regulations, the relevant building surveyor must prepare or update a Maintenance Schedule for an existing building or place of public entertainment. The Schedule lists all Essential Safety Measures required in the building, together with their maintenance requirements, set out in chronological order so that nothing is missed.
How Maintenance Schedules Prepared
Stokes Safety compiles a Maintenance Schedule by reviewing all past Occupancy Permits issued for a building, requesting an archive document search with the relevant municipal council's building department, and conducting a site visit to identify any Essential Safety Measures that the historical documentation may not capture. This combination of desktop research and on-site verification gives building owners a Maintenance Schedule that reflects what is actually installed and operating in their building today, not just what was approved decades ago.
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Benefits of a Maintenance Schedule
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Many older buildings have accumulated Essential Safety Measure and maintenance information across multiple Occupancy Permits issued at different times, often for different works. Rather than digging through several historical documents to work out what needs to be maintained and how often, a single up-to-date Maintenance Schedule amalgamates all of that information into one simple, reliable reference. This makes life easier for building owners, facility managers, and the maintenance contractors who need to plan and carry out ESM servicing.
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A current Maintenance Schedule is useful to a wide range of stakeholders: building owners who carry the legal obligation to maintain ESM, facility and maintenance managers who need a clear scope to work from, and building surveyors and auditors who use the Schedule as the reference point for assessing ongoing compliance. With an updated Maintenance Schedule in place, building owners have a clear, defensible record of what Essential Safety Measures exist in their building and what's required to keep them compliant, reducing the risk of gaps in maintenance being identified during an audit or, worse, during an actual emergency.
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If your building doesn't have an up-to-date Maintenance Schedule, or you're not sure whether the one you have reflects what's actually installed on site, contact Stokes Safety to discuss preparing or updating one. You can also get started with our online Building Permit application form if your enquiry relates to a specific building project.