Church has been open for a while now and the list of maintenance issues you started with has grown as more and more of your membership and congregation attend worship services, prayer groups, leadership meetings and outreach projects.

As you walk through the building its easy to become overwhelmed by the task ahead.  What do I do first, who should I get to do that? Could I do it? Will it last a bit longer if I just ignore it?   Worst still; the teams and volunteers have had months of lockdown to come up with grand plans for what they would want to do with the building with their specific ministry.  You have to decide who gets priority and who has to wait.

In this article we aim to set out the best way to deal with the prioritisation and assignment of the maintenance work required.  Proverbs 29:18 says that “without a vision [or a plan] the people perish.  Ok….so you need a plan.  What else do we think God is saying about the building.  Because he is interested in everything don’t forget. “pay Caesar what is Casers”  Mark12:17 highlights the deliberation of living in the current narrative.  I view this quite clearly as the need to keep to the current laws and principles of a governed society.  Simply put…keep to the laws, standards and principles of the current society in which you live.

So how do I translate all of that?

My advice is to analyse. Analysis is simply breaking the subject matter down into its constituent parts.    

So lets get going with the priorities.  For each building, floor and location you need to assess general and specific conditions of the fabric of those locations.  Logging them into a priority will help focus your leadership team on what to do first, second and soon.  Following this process provides sufficient information to plan, budget and risk assess what is required now and in the future.  Start with some basic principles of priority.  Usually these start with fire safety, health and safety and general condition of the buildings.  These are priorities you need to assess and decide on before you draw up plans for mission extension.  Your first mission is to be have a building fit for purpose; now.  To ‘keep the lights on’ as one might say.  You will not be able to do everything.  You need to prioritise.  

Assessing the Condition

The condition of the locations should be assessed based on the following.  Build a simple log or tabular reference and try to categorise.

·      Poor - Below what is considered acceptable.  Possibly unsafe.  Act now. Not Fit for Purpose (FFP)

·      Adequate – safe but needs action within next 12 months. Fit for Purpose (FFP)

·      Good – no issues.  No action required. Review in 12 months.  Fit for mission extension

·      Excellent – possibly new installation.  Review in 24 months.  Fit for mission extension

Once you start to spread out your measurement of priority you start to break down the problem into manageable chunks.  This process may take a few days to complete and might need some additional expertise but the reality for you as the person responsible is to be able to make decisions. Decisions that limit risk, ensure safety and enable mission.  Sometimes mission may have to wait a while as you get back to a Fit for Purpose state. At least if you follow some sort of process of breaking down the issues and prioritising based on some sort of criteria, it will be difficult for those with the loudest voices (and we know who they are don’t we) to object or argue the rationale.  That is it really.  Developing a rationale you can explain and justify.

Setting the Priority

When you have judged each location you then need to decide what to do first.  Covenant have used this set of priorities on multiple church buildings.  Whilst not perfect, it does help to get you going and provide a balanced approach to the tasks ahead.

Critical (P1)– matters of fire risk and health and safety that require urgent attention and at minimum a full Fire Risk and Health and Safety assessment.  If not addressed, these critical issues could lead to  lossof life or injury.  Examples: -

·      Damp

·      Fire alarm issues

·      Emergency lighting issues

·      Antisocial behaviour (ASB) issues.  Poor external lighting etc.

·      Falling masonry

·      Leaks and leak damage

·      Bad odours – toilets and drains blocked etc.

·      Vandalism

·      Broken fittings such as toilet seats, loo roll dispensers, hand dryers, soap dispensers, door handles etc.

·      Trip hazards such as uneven slabs, carpet tears, step nosing broken etc.

Intermediate (P2)– areas where clients may fall into legal issues with such items as limiting room usage because of a lack of escape routes, or lack of disabled access. Important but not necessarily life threatening.

Advisory (P3)– usually set against expansion work and refurbishments.  Where churches are starting a new project or venture and it would be advised to address areas to ensure compliance is improved as part of the expansion.  Such as increased lighting provision, an elevator instead of a stair lift, wider doors for improved access.

Explaining the problem/work

If your keeping a log, make some useful comments.  Why? Because as the months role on you will forget what the issue was and other staff and volunteers won’t know what to do when you are sick or on annual leave.  Aim to be as succinct as possible.  No one wants to read a long explanation.  This is a log of short phrase information to record vital information and enable decision making.  Make sure, when discussing the log at your leadership team meetings that the subject matter expert (SME) is present to qualify the short phrase statement in the log and enable the leadership team to come to a decision.

Who is going to carry out the works?

So who is going to do the work?  its wise to make an educated guess on who might carry out the works.  If you have caretaker or maintenance team or person then that’s quite easy.  However, if you don’t then your church will need to assign to volunteers from the church. Don’t assign anything to the minister. That’s not their job. The minister usually offers to put a shelf up if they are struggling to finish their sermon.  Procrastination is killer.  Only joking.  

Create your log as follows for this part of the assignment

·       Not assigned

·       N/A

·       External Contractor

·       Caretaker

·       Volunteer

·       Fundraising

Please note that the law has changed quite significantly in relation to certain aspects of work required. All gas and electrical works must be carried out by Gas Safe and NICEIC engineers respectively.  Any works to air ducting, ventilation, fire systems and appliances, extraction systems, asbestos and the like must also be carried out by approved contractors.

Be mindful of your church public liability insurance.  Does the policy allow volunteers to work up ladders, on platforms or walk on flat roofs for example.  Please ensure you check that volunteers can work legally before assigning.

Some assignment works are long term and require fundraising.  The issue might be logged as ‘poor’ and P1 but if the likely expenditure is high then fundraising may be required.  This could mean a loan, grant application or a special gifting service et al.

When does the work need to be completed by

The timeline to complete remedial works and actions varies, dependant on condition and resources. Each church should consider the budgets within the year that have been set and whether the works are fully budget for or would require target dates for future budgets.  Sometimes the works ‘bleed 'into following year budgets.  Plan for it.

If you don’t have a budget that shouldn’t prevent you from assessing the condition and priority.  It will bring focus to the works that require immediate actions and remedy.

Its very important to enter a completion date.  If the log has an action to be taken but no date then its almost impossible to manage any expectations for completion.  Changing dates is part of managing the log, but no target date means the remedial actions necessary are not being actively managed.  That’s a risk to the building, the congregation and potentially the general public who may use the building or walk the car parks and areas around the grounds.

Summary

The Issue Log is only as good as the information in it.  You need to ‘feed the beast’ so to speak.  If there is a plan to extend mission, your Issue Log will show the balance you need to apply between maintaining a viable , fit for purpose church building and the desire to start new projects.

The log also shows the church is being accountable, is managing risk, is thinking ahead and critically is taking responsibility for its building.  

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