The Real Cost of a Leaking Commercial Roof: Risk Management
The Real Cost of a Leaking Commercial Roof: Risk Management
Property managers and building owners often know what it takes to replace a commercial roof. Costs range from as low as $3 per square foot to over $10 per square foot depending on the type of roof and if it needs removed and then replaced.
While that price per square foot can scare a property manager or building owner who may be trying to keep their investment property turning a profit, it can really scare them when they have large buildings. As an example, a 100,000 square foot facility (which isn’t too hard to find) would incur a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars or even breaking half a million in cost.
Risk Management Plans
Let’s look at this another way: risk management. When large companies make a risk management plan, not many (if any) would include commercial roofing in the plan. This is a big mistake for many reasons.
Let’s look at worker’s compensation. All businesses have worker’s compensation insurance. Some industries have very high rates costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. A quick Google search for worker’s compensation will scare any business owner to a fast death. An employee walking across a floor and slipping from a leaky roof could cost you your business (and they’re consultants, not sleazy lawyers).
Take this a step further: let’s say you own a retail store with hundreds of customers walking through every day. You think an employee will go after your assets? Try a random person with a shady lawyer. Stop and think about the last time you drove down a freeway. Did you see a billboard with a lawyer on it?
Now let’s look at what you have under your commercial roof. I was recently in a very large commercial building with specialized equipment costing nearly $750,000 per piece. And there are four of these pieces of equipment under this leaking roof. Very expensive to replace! And not only that, if one of these pieces of equipment gets wet and ruined, how long does it take to get replaced? How much revenue would a company lose with one of these out of production? This particular company makes tens of millions of dollars annually. Even a few days out of production could cost millions in lost revenue.
Property managers know all too well how hard it is to attract and keep good tenants. Many of these leasers can have all the same risk management issues I wrote about. The last issue is property value. A commercial building with a leaking roof that was put off too many years becomes more or less worthless in value. No one wants to buy a commercial property with a leaking roof.
So as a property manager or building owner of a commercial roof you may not want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a roof, but it is good risk management and a good investment. Call a professional commercial roofing contractor like us and protect yourself before it’s too late.
