Timing Is Not Risk

A Moyne Ross register expresses timing in three horizons: within one year, years two to five, and years six to ten. The near-term horizon is protected. An item belongs there only when the whole intervention window falls inside the next twelve months.

The test is simple to state: why must this happen within twelve months? If the honest answer is “because it is important”, the item probably belongs later, with monitoring or investigation now. If the answer is “because it is failing, unsafe, non-compliant with a current obligation or about to cause consequential damage”, it belongs now.

Every dollar in the first year should be able to answer one question: why must this happen within twelve months?

Consequence still matters. In the register it is carried by impact, on its own scale, and by the item’s description of what failure would mean. A fire system with modest remaining life may be impact four and still a two-to-five-year replacement, with inspection and testing confirmed now. A lift with serious safety implications may need immediate attention. The impact rating tells the reader why the item matters. The timing tells them when to act.

This is consistent with the way professional guidance treats the question. The RICS approach to building surveys and technical due diligence distinguishes urgent works within a short period from planned works over longer horizons, and leaves the timing of intervention to professional judgement on the evidence. Risk is not treated as the same thing as expenditure timing.

Service life planning has an international standard, and it makes the same separation this paper argues for. ISO 15686 estimates a component’s life by starting from a reference life and adjusting it for the conditions it actually faces.

The factor method is a reminder that timing is an estimate about a particular component in particular conditions, which is why the register records the evidence behind each timing rather than a table value alone. Consequence is a different question, and it stays on its own scale.

Consider two rows from an office register. The first is a fire detection system: twenty-two years old, functioning, with parts becoming harder to source. Impact is high, because the system protects life. But it passes its tests and its intervention window opens in three to four years when parts support lapses. Timing: two to five years, with annual testing confirmed in the first year. The second is a section of roof membrane: fifteen years old, with active leaks over a tenancy and staining spreading. Impact is moderate. Timing: within one year, because the window for intervention is now, before consequential damage.

A risk-weighted plan would put the fire system first and the roof second. A timing-disciplined plan puts the roof in the first year and the fire system in the middle years, with testing now. Both items are still visible and both are taken seriously. The first-year budget is smaller and every dollar in it can say why it is there.

Many near-term actions are not works at all. They are investigations, surveys or tests that resolve uncertainty: a roof survey, a facade inspection, a hazardous materials survey, a structural assessment. These can and should sit in the first year, with their own small cost, while the works they may lead to sit later as conditional allowances. Treating the check as the works overstates year one. Ignoring the check understates risk.

Pricing What You Don’t Know develops how conditional allowances are carried without inflating the base programme.

A plan that separates timing from risk is more useful to an owner. It shows the true near-term commitment, which is usually smaller and more defensible than a risk-weighted plan would suggest. It shows which items need watching rather than spending. And it lets the owner bring items forward for strategic reasons, a tenant’s requirement, a refurbishment, a sale, rather than because the plan defaulted them there.

It also produces a better rating. The MR Index reads consequence and timing separately too, and attention needed soon weighs more than attention needed later in the decade. A building does not look worse simply because it has important systems; it looks worse when important systems need attention soon.