Routine Maintenance

Under ASTM E2018, repair or upkeep within the budget and skills of the property's ordinary maintenance staff.

By Nicolas Reimer, Founder, Baseline PCR · E2018-24 s3.2 · Published September 18, 2026

Routine maintenance is work that ordinary maintenance staff do with an ordinary budget: filter changes, cleaning drains, touching up paint, replacing lamps, periodic sweeping. E2018 excludes it from physical deficiencies and the long-term-cost appendix excludes it from the reserve table, so it appears in a PCR only as a sentence ("periodic cleaning of the site drainage structures is routine maintenance") and never as a cost line.

The line between routine maintenance and a deficiency is the reporting threshold and the skill involved. Clearing a catch basin is routine; replacing a collapsed storm line is not. Servicing an extinguisher is routine in cost but is reported anyway because it is a life-safety item. The report's cost methodology says how the line was drawn.

Sources

ASTM E2018-24, Standard Guide for Property Condition Assessments: Baseline Property Condition Assessment Process (ASTM International)

ASTM E2018-24 is copyrighted by ASTM International and is paraphrased here, never reproduced; buy the guide from ASTM to read the text. This page is general information for practitioners, not engineering, legal or lending advice.