Deferred maintenance and repairs are the estimated cost to bring Government-owned property, plant, and equipment to an acceptable condition, resulting from not performing maintenance on a timely basis. Deferred maintenance and repairs exclude the cost of expanding the capacity of assets or upgrading them to serve needs different from those originally intended. The consequences of not performing regular maintenance and repairs could include increased safety hazards, poor service to the public, higher costs in the future, and inefficient operations. Estimated deferred maintenance and repairs cost are not accrued in the Statements of Net Cost or recognized as a liability on the Balance Sheets.
The amounts disclosed for deferred maintenance and repairs are allowed to be measured using one of the following three methods:
The amounts disclosed in the table below have all been measured using the condition assessment survey method. The standards for acceptable operating condition and the changes in these standards and changes in asset condition vary widely between the Federal entities.
Some deferred maintenance and repairs have been deemed critical. Such amounts and conditions are defined by the individual agencies with responsibility for the safekeeping of these assets. The critical maintenance amount is not included in the low or high estimates amounts and is reported separately. Low and high estimates are based on the materiality of the estimated cost of returning the asset to the acceptable condition versus the total value of the corresponding asset.
|Deferred Maintenance and Repairs Cost Range|
|Low Estimate||High Estimate||Critical Maintenance|
|(In billions of dollars)||2012||2011||2012||2011||2012||2011|
|Buildings, structures and facilities||31.5||31.3||34.5||36.4||106.3||97.6|
|Furniture, fixtures and equipment||0.1||0.1||0.1||0.1||1.3||2.5|
|Other general property, plant, and equipment||5.3||5.1||5.3||5.1||0.7||0.8|
|Total deferred maintenance||43.6||41.0||49.1||47.7||110.0||102.1|
Please refer to the individual financial statements of DOI, DOD, USDA, DOE, and VA for detailed significant information on deferred maintenance and repairs, including the standards used for acceptable operating condition and changes in asset condition.