Opinion

Maintenance, a price worth paying?

George Hutchinson

Take the following two statements:

  • We live in one of the richest countries in the world, in general people have a great quality of life, are better educated, have better services and will live longer. 
  • Our population is getting older, our country is overcrowded, we are burdened by debt and we have to compete with newer, younger, hungrier economies. 

Depending on your outlook, you might agree more with one of the statements more than the other. It may also be that both have merit, a strong element of truth runs through them, and as such they are not incorrect.

If the outside world doesn’t ever consider the work that goes into maintaining our assets, they will never get there emotionally.  The answer has to be more fuss, bluster and more of a spotlight.

Where there is least ambiguity, however, is that the second statement is a far more conducive call to action – ‘something must be done’ – than the first. And we live in a world where the agenda of the shrill is the agenda listened to. 

This is our challenge because our infrastructure works really quite well. For the majority of the time our lights stay on, our trains run on time, our motorways flow freely, our planes take off on schedule, our taps turn on and our networks are fast. We are privileged to live in a first world country where our expectations are high, are mostly met and all of this is delivered safely and at a reasonable cost to the general public. 

This is an incredible achievement, yet it also harms the industry’s case for the status quo, let alone when it ask for more. We know that just maintaining all of the above takes billions of pounds and the work of hundreds of thousands of committed and skilled individuals working day and night.

An army hidden from sight is keeping our infrastructure going and keeping us safe. But because it is hidden and our infrastructure works most of the time, it doesn’t feel as though we need to take ongoing maintenance seriously. During my time at Tube Lines, friends never asked how we found the time to maintain the Tube? Rather, the most frequent question was why the Tube, inconveniently, didn’t run all the time? 

Would politicians be so keen to cut a ‘perish management team’, or an ‘anti-degradation programme’, or might they value them a little more highly than a general maintenance budget?  

And, it is this lack of understanding, awareness and urgency that damages the industry when it makes its case to the wider world for current spending and about future priorities. For if, as is the case for most of us, when we use - Heathrow, Euston, M42, broadband, gas central heating, or even a light switch - it works.

So why should we feel an emotional tug to justify maintenance funding, let alone a need to open a Pandora’s Box that surround future capacity issues to address a problem not yet felt?  

This industry has become hugely adept at making things work without fuss or bluster and the consequence rebounds upon us. Take roads maintenance, where the budget is almost always first to be cut, because it feels as though there is no impact from it. If the outside world doesn’t ever consider the work that goes into maintaining our assets, they will never get there emotionally. 

The answer has to be more fuss, bluster and more of a spotlight.  Maybe maintenance needs to be rebranded to tap into our basic tendency that values the negative more highly than the positive - every time a train goes over a track, or a car drives down a road, our infrastructure ‘dis-integrates’ a little.

Would politicians be so keen to cut a ‘perish management team’, or an ‘anti-degradation programme’, or might they value them a little more highly than a general maintenance budget?  We live in an emotional news driven world, and as such we must have our maintenance call to action.

The industry needs to get better at shining a light on what it takes to keep everything going and the unsung heroes that keep us safe. For without it, we are not going to have any chance of persuading others that maintenance is a price worth paying for. 

George Hutchinson is a partner at consultant Stockwell Communications.