Nobody throws a party for a new roof.

Nobody holds a ribbon-cutting for a replaced boiler. Nobody calls the local news to cover a parking lot that finally got its asphalt resurfaced. And yet these are exactly the kinds of investments that keep public buildings safe, functional, and serviceable – the investments that, when deferred long enough, lead to the failures that do make the news, and never in a good way.

This is the fundamental communication challenge that facility and asset managers face every day. Deferred Capital Renewal and Maintenance – what we at Roth IAMS call DCRM – is essential, often urgent, and almost universally unglamorous. New buildings get headlines, politicians, and photo ops. Maintenance gets ignored until it becomes a crisis.

If you manage public sector facilities, you already know this. The question is what you can do about it.

Understand Why Renewal Work Gets Overlooked

The first step is understanding the forces working against you. Renewal work typically only gets attention after a failure – which means by the time it’s in the spotlight, it’s already negative press. A roof that collapses, an HVAC system that fails in the middle of winter, a structural issue that closes a school wing – these are the stories that get told about deferred maintenance, and they are the stories that create urgency without creating momentum for the proactive investment that prevents them.

Meanwhile, organizations consistently prioritize new construction over essential upkeep. And it’s not entirely irrational – new buildings are tangible, exciting, and easy to describe to boards and communities. Maintenance is the opposite. It requires people to care about something invisible: the gap between where your facilities are now and where they’d be if you hadn’t invested.

Emotion and politics drive these decisions as much as logic. New builds generate excitement. Maintenance generates accountability. And in most political environments, accountability is the harder sell.

Emotional Appeal: Making Renewal Newsworthy

The antidote to all of this is intentional communication – making renewal work visible, meaningful, and even compelling. This doesn’t require spin. It requires reframing.

Good renewal planning, as we at Roth IAMS has observed, is like healthy living: proactive, disciplined, and almost always ignored until a crisis makes it unavoidable. The organizations that maintain consistent momentum on their DCRM programs are the ones that have figured out how to make the work feel important – to boards, to senior leaders, to communities, and yes, sometimes to the media.

Practical approaches include organizing ribbon-cutting ceremonies for major maintenance projects. A school that gets a new roof, a community center that gets an upgraded HVAC system, a library that gets restored accessibility features – these are stories worth telling. Invite the press. Invite local officials. Frame the investment not as “we fixed something old” but as “we protected this community asset for the next generation.”

Involve politicians early. Local leaders who champion maintenance projects bring credibility and visibility that no amount of internal advocacy can match. When the mayor or the school board chair is standing in front of a renovated building talking about responsible stewardship, that message lands differently than when it comes from the facilities department.

Data and the Long-Term Savings Argument

Emotional appeal gets people in the room. Data keeps them there.

When pitching for renewal funding, comprehensive and defensible data is essential. Documenting the current state of your facilities – maintenance backlogs, the age of critical systems, historical spending versus actual need – transforms an abstract conversation about condition into a concrete case for investment. Visual presentations that show the gap between current funding and documented requirements give stakeholders something they can understand and act on.

One of the most persuasive arguments available is the long-term savings case. Timely capital renewal prevents costly emergency repairs and replacements. Replacing an aging HVAC system before it fails costs significantly less – in direct costs, disruption, and downtime – than replacing it after a failure. This argument works because it speaks the language that finance directors and boards understand: return on investment.

Leverage industry standards and benchmarks to support your position. Showing how your facility’s maintenance practices align with – or fall short of – recognized standards is a persuasive argument, and it signals that your investment requests are grounded in something beyond organizational preference.

Building a Coalition: Consistent Advocacy Over Time

Securing DCRM funding is rarely a one-time effort. The organizations that maintain momentum do so through sustained, consistent advocacy – not through occasional urgent requests when something breaks.

Engage stakeholders early in the planning process. Regular updates and open communication build a coalition of supporters who understand the program and can speak to its importance. This includes not just senior leadership but also the end-users of the facilities – students, staff, residents – whose testimonials about the impact of well-maintained environments can be among the most powerful advocacy tools available.

Be persistent, and don’t be discouraged by initial setbacks. Adapt your strategy based on feedback and changing circumstances. Build a track record of successfully managed projects – delivered on time, on budget, with clear before-and-after documentation – and use that track record to strengthen the case for future investment.

Why Consistency Is the Strategy

The organizations that successfully maintain focus on DCRM year over year share a common characteristic: they treat advocacy as an ongoing program, not a periodic ask. Every board presentation, every stakeholder update, every successfully completed project is an opportunity to reinforce the message that responsible stewardship of public assets is not just a facilities issue – it’s an organizational priority.

Ignoring maintenance leads to major disruptions, unexpected costs, and risks to the people who use the facilities every day. That’s a story that eventually gets told whether you choose to tell it proactively or not. The question is whether you’re telling it on your terms – with data, with a plan, with demonstrated success – or whether you’re telling it in response to a failure that could have been prevented.