Last week, I talked about why we want you to support our campaign to ditch the term “Deferred Maintenance” and leave it in the past. History has shown us that just changing terminology can completely shift a conversation.

This week I wanted to also revisit one of the questions I almost always get asked when I put the challenge out into the world – “What should we say instead?”

The terminology that we at Roth IAMS use instead is Deferred Capital Renewal and Maintenance (DCRM).  As I have explained before, most of what has been called DM in the past is actually capital renewal.  However, although a much smaller part of the problem, maintenance issues are also often included.  Additionally, many organizations have different definitions of maintenance. This is why we have chosen not to throw the baby (the term maintenance) out with the bath water (the term DM) and use DCRM, which expands the definition, without losing the maintenance element. 

By providing our thinking, we are not prescribing a term per se.  Our main goal is to stop the use of DM, not promote DCRM.  Ideally as an industry we could come together and use a single term so that we could develop one that becomes as pervasive as DM has (or used to have if we have anything to say about it!!!!).

I know of several different organizations that are coming together to figure out what term to use instead.  My guess is that several different terms will pop-up in different sectors for a period of time and eventually one will gain more adoption than the others and eventually become the new normal.  

I don’t expect it to change overnight, but I am confident that by changing the words that we are using (to whatever new term the industry decides makes the most sense) and the conversation overall, we can have a positive impact on solving the world’s deferred capital renewal and maintenance backlog crisis!