Evaluating maintenance budget for an AC plant under its contextual conditions

Purpose Maintenance actions are initiated by the annual maintenance budget (AMB) allocated for a plant system. It ensures that the assets are kept in a healthy and reliable state. The purpose of this paper is to scientifically evaluate the AMB for an air conditioning (AC) plant system, which forms an integral part of facility management. Design/methodology/approach This paper estimates the AMB of an AC system for specific contextual conditions using incidence matrix of the budget influencing variables. The diagonal elements of the matrix represent the values of the budget variables, whereas the off-diagonal elements represent the degree of influence among these. The maintenance budget function is derived from this matrix and is used to evaluate the AMB for the AC system as a percentage of its asset replacement value (ARV). Findings The AMB for the AC plant system considered in the work is evaluated as 11.1 per cent of ARV for the conditions unique to its context. The actual maintenance expenditure is lower by 7.6 per cent than the estimated value of the budget. Research limitations/implications The results of the methodology are a good guide for practicing facility managers. The shortcoming of the methodology is that it relies on fixed weights of the inter-relations among the budget variables, which may not be necessarily true. Practical implications This approach is expected to aid the maintenance managers in envisaging the AMB for their plant systems which operate under contextual conditions specific to their plant. Originality/value There is no evidence to indicate existence of maintenance budget evaluation methodology for an AC plant system based on its contextual conditions. This paper attempts to fill this gap.