You've Taken Over a Building—Now What? (Guidelines from an AEC Consultant’s Perspective)

Jun 02, 2025

Whether you’re acquiring, leasing, or inheriting a building, you’re taking on a big and exciting, yet often-daunting responsibility. It can be an overwhelming experience to be critically observing and staying on top of its condition, compliance, and ongoing operations. As a firm of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) consultants, we advise many new and seasoned building owners through this process. To have a smooth transition to and a successful future for your building, there are a variety of important aspects to understand.

1/ Evaluate the Building’s Condition

Prior to making any decisions and plans, you first need a thorough understanding of the property’s condition and any potential risks that may come with it. This typically means you will need to:

• Review Existing Documentation: Collect and review all available architectural drawings, engineering reports, permits, maintenance logs, and warranties.

• Conduct a Building Survey: Engage experts to assess structural integrity, MEP (mechanical, electrical, plumbing) systems, roofing, fire/life safety, and accessibility compliance. This will help you understand the condition of your key building systems, such as your plumbing systems, electrical systems, and heating and cooling systems. It will also help you learn the condition of your roof and enclosure to assess performance and identify potential or current water leaks.

• Review Code Compliance: Regulations/codes are always changing; older (and not-so-old) properties may require updates to meet current regulations.

If you've recently acquired the building, often times, a property condition assessment was completed that allows you a jump-start to assess the condition of your building. This evaluation and report serves as a guide to understand your property and prioritize investments and capital needs. A detailed run-through with the consultant(s) is a great first step to understand the overarching condition and what, if any, significant concerns were identified.

2/ Develop a Capital Improvement Plan

A capital improvement plan will help qualify, quantify, and prioritize critical items to maintain your investment. Often coupled with a property condition assessment, the capital improvement plan is a critical tool, a property playbook, to be used to prioritize key deferred maintenance and capital needs. In turn, these needs can then be fully scoped, reviewed, and priced by local, qualified contractors to better tune your playbook. If any areas are recommended for additional investigation, they should be promptly evaluated to understand the full impact and cost exposure.

These capital improvement plans help future-proof your investment when used correctly. Here are some strategies to help with prioritizing the playbook, and getting the most out of your investment:

• Address Deferred Maintenance: When deferred maintenance items are identified, often these items are not functional or are in need of repair. Prioritizing these items will limit further damage—damage that often yields costlier—and more disruptive—future repairs.

• Understand End of Useful Life Items: Each building element has an anticipated useful life, which serves as a catalyst for replacement. Understand the difference between when repairs are able to extend the life of building system or element, or when replacement is the best course of action.

• Aesthetic Enhancements: Improve curb appeal and interior finishes.

• Smart Building Technology: Implement automation for lighting, climate control, and security.

Understanding options and managing risk is a critical component when prioritizing a capital improvement plan. Engaging the right consultant to create this plan encourages this necessary dialogue to help make the best possible decisions for your investment. When you plan for immediate and long-term maintenance, you are able to better understand your asset and avoid costly repairs.

3/ Develop Proactive Operations and Maintenance Practices

Once your building has been assessed, ongoing maintenance becomes a critical component to ensuring your investment remains healthy. For longer holds—whether part of an intended strategy or unintended consequences of a volatile market cycle, being proactive in identifying and executing repairs and performing critical ongoing maintenance is paramount for ensuring your money goes further and your investment stays strong. Whichever the case, create—and implement—a proactive maintenance plan which reviews and repairs critical building equipment and systems, especially:

• Building Equipment: To ensure equipment is running at its optimal target(s), engage a qualified company to review your building's heating and cooling systems, plumbing, fire sprinkler/fire alarm systems, elevators, and electrical systems. While building systems are often reviewed on an annual basis, some are recommended to be monitored before peak seasonal loads are encountered, such as in the fall and spring.

• Roof and Building Enclosure: Vulnerable conditions, rips, or tears can create serious leak points and/or reduce the useful life of the assembly, so it’s also very important to perform annual reviews on your roof to maintain the system warranty and mitigate risks. Review the enclosure to identify the structural integrity of the building as well as the condition of the windows, claddings, and sealants to help mitigate any air or water intrusions that may lead to unintended water damage or building performance issues.

• Parking and Other Site Areas: Damage and vulnerabilities overall at parking garages or surface lots add up fast if left unheeded. Proactive reviews to seal and repair cracks and mitigate freeze/thaw damage extend the life of these elements while keeping costly repairs at bay. Damage is also often seen by irrigation spraying against a building, bushes or trees in contact with a façade, or landscaping too close to a framed wall, creating an avenue for pests and moisture damage to compromise your structure. So, it’s important to ensure landscaped areas adjacent to buildings are not only tidy but also kept far enough away from your building.

4/ Understand Local Jurisdictional Requirements

Every jurisdiction has specific zoning laws, environmental regulations, and safety codes that must be followed. These regulations can be confusing and often change. Understanding the nature of these requirements and what it means for your investment is imperative. Areas we often find we are helping clients navigate are:

• Accessibility Compliance: In addition, of course, to a building owner or manager wanting fair access for all, current federal requirements require equal access for public accommodations. Understanding and removing barriers are a critical component that needs to be understood and implemented to avoid class action lawsuits against the property.

• Sustainability Requirements: Independent of an owner’s own hopes or goals for building efficiency, many jurisdictions are setting new requirements and goals for building performance—and they are often associated with costly fees if not met. It’s wise to know where your building stands through benchmarking and evaluating your building to understand what opportunities are available to meet these energy performance requirements through an ASHRAE Level 2 or Level 3 energy audit.

• Façade Ordinances: Safety of occupants and the surrounding community is critical; several cities across the country require façade reviews on existing buildings to ensure people are protected. Understanding the level of review required and at the necessary intervals is paramount to ensure safety and compliance.

5/ Optimize for Building Performance and Energy Efficiency

An energy efficient building isn’t just good for the environment—it reduces operational costs, potentially saving thousands of dollars in operational costs over the hold period. While some jurisdictions are setting building performance benchmarks, ensuring your building runs as efficiently as possible will save money in the long term. Some strategies we've implemented to reduce operational expenditures are:

• Energy Audits: These studies allow for the entire building to be reviewed as well as identify areas for improvement, such as outdated lighting, air leakage or thermal gaps (which increase energy loads on HVAC systems), or inefficient HVAC systems that require a significant amount of power. Building systems are interconnected, so when a building is evaluated in its entirety, a holistic performance plan can be developed and implemented that provides the best roadmap to efficiency. Targeting lighting and air intrusion to reduce HVAC loads means you may get by with a smaller HVAC system and, therefore, expend less energy.

• Create Green Lease Requirements: When negotiating tenant build-outs, encourage energy efficient measures to optimize building performance, such as plug load requirements, lighting requirements, and HVAC commissioning.

• Resiliency Review: Threats caused by increased storm activities, wildfires, and extreme temperatures may affect your building and its operation during—and after—an event. Review your building against the hazards in its area to identify and address your investment’s vulnerabilities.

6/ Enhance Security & Safety

Again, a top priority is protecting occupants and assets. Several critical elements are at the forefront of ensuring safe surroundings, which help with overall tenant retention and satisfaction as well as property stabilization. We recommend prioritizing the following:

• Access Control & Surveillance: Ensure secure entry points into the building and install security cameras where necessary.

• Fire & Life Safety Compliance: Test alarms, extinguishers, and emergency lighting. Review the fire sprinkler system and conduct required testing.

• Site and Building Lighting: Make sure lighting is operational and perform a night-lighting survey to identify any dark locations that may pose safety risks.

7/ Engage Professional Consultants Early

The earlier you have expert involvement, the better. It is the smartest move for making the most informed decisions and reducing risk.

For all of the action areas noted above, having an advisor that is able to help identify, qualify and quantify the opportunities and risks for your investment is paramount. Each element can be nuanced and integrated with another building element, so seeing the whole picture can make an enormous difference in managing risk and maintaining your investment.

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Owning or managing a building is a significant responsibility—and it can be a very rewarding investment. when you have an intentional and vigilant approach. By performing comprehensive initial assessments and proactive operation and maintenance practices, prioritizing a capital improvement action plan, and planning for future improvements, you’ll set yourself up for long-term success.

Questions, or not sure where or how where to start in navigating these processes? Consulting with AEC professionals at Marx|Okubo can give you the guidance and expertise needed to move through these effectively.