SFG20 maintenance specification goes online
The Building & Engineering Services Association has redeveloped its SFG20 standard maintenance specification for building and engineering services into an online application that can readily be tailored to specific needs. SFG20 was launched over 22 years ago, and the latest update is described as the most comprehensive and budget-friendly product update to impact building services since that launch.
Andy Green, vice chairman of the SFG20 technical standards committee, explains that every task has been reviewed from technical and legal standpoints. The other major development, and a huge step change, is to enormously improve the ability to customise a maintenance specification by sector and functions — a feature that committee chairman Peter Excell describes as ‘long overdue’.
Designed for contractors, consultants and end users, the SFG20 web service offers bespoke maintenance models for specific building types — including schools, commercial offices, banks, prisons, libraries, hotels, retail units and car parks. There are more models to come. Customising the core task library to suit a range of needs prevents the over-maintaining of assets.
Inclusion of RICS’s new rules of measurements completes the life-cycle costing sequence of build, maintain and replace.
Maintenance standards can be customised to a number of levels. The most basic is statutory requirements — which will help protect those responsible for maintenance against pressure on budgets. To that basic requirement can be added business critical and renewals.
All tasks can be edited to create a ‘library’ that can be owned by the building owner or maintenance contractor and shared.
The new SFG20 is aimed at all sizes of organisation — with the initial licence fee starting at £350 and rising according to size and type of organisation to £2000.
Bruce Kirton, chief executive of B&ES Publications, says, ‘SFG20 has long been recognised as the backbone to the building engineering services maintenance industry. But with that recognition comes the responsibility to help our customers work efficiently and deliver against austerity budgets. The new SFG20 rationalises the way clients, consultants and contractors work together — streamlining the tendering process and associated project management.’
