Is Your Service Agreement Really Ready for a Heatwave? | CORE Maintenance

Most Heatwave Failures Aren’t Caused by the Weather — They’re Caused by the Service Agreement

Every summer now brings the same headlines: offices sending staff home, server rooms overheating and hospitality venues scaling back because their kitchens cannot cope. The explanation offered is usually the same too — the building simply wasn’t ready for the heat.

That may be true, but it misses an important point. In many of the buildings we encounter, the equipment itself is not the underlying problem. The vulnerability begins with the service agreement sitting beneath it — a contract often written for average conditions rather than peak demand. Tom Lyons, Operations Director at CORE Maintenance, explains why the real weak point in many UK buildings is not the cooling system, but the maintenance agreement written to support it.

A Service Agreement Built for the Wrong Summer

Most commercial service agreements are structured around a standard visit frequency: perhaps two services a year, or quarterly visits where the building or client requires them. That schedule satisfies routine maintenance obligations and keeps a system running through a typical UK year.

What it is not designed to answer is a more demanding question: what happens when equipment must run continuously at full load for a week or more, with little opportunity for the building to release accumulated heat overnight?

Many of the agreements we review contain no mechanism for adjusting maintenance arrangements during sustained heat. There is often no pre-agreed escalation route for periods when several clients need support at once, no provision for additional inspections ahead of forecast extreme weather, and no requirement to hold key components rather than ordering them after a failure. The service agreement was written to keep a system compliant, not to keep it resilient.

For most of the year, that distinction stays hidden. It becomes visible on the fourth or fifth day of a heatwave, when a restricted filter, an ageing component or a minor airflow problem is suddenly the reason a communications room is running hot.

Where the Real Risk Sits

Servicing frequency is only part of the issue. The more fundamental problem is that service agreements are often written around generic visit intervals rather than the particular demands placed on individual assets.

A rooftop condenser serving a south-facing building and a precision cooling unit protecting a server room have very different operating conditions and risk profiles. Maintaining both on the same generic cycle may be administratively convenient, but it does not reflect their duty, location or importance to the organisation. Manufacturer recommendations, equipment condition, operating hours and the demands of the space should all inform the maintenance regime.

This matters most during extreme heat. Much existing cooling plant was selected and rated around outdoor design temperatures of roughly 32°C to 35°C. When temperatures rise beyond those conditions, cooling capacity and efficiency can fall at exactly the point demand is peaking — leaving far less tolerance for restricted airflow, ageing components or increased internal loads.

Under normal conditions, a mismatch between the service agreement and the demands placed on the equipment produces a gradual decline in performance and efficiency. During a heatwave, it can cause a sudden failure, because the equipment has not received the attention its actual workload requires.

Buildings also change after contracts are signed. Occupancy increases, layouts are altered, additional IT equipment is installed and spaces begin to serve different purposes. Unless the service agreement is reviewed alongside those changes, the service being delivered may continue to reflect a building that no longer exists.

Procurement Must Account for Peak Demand

There is a procurement issue here too. A service agreement built around a low price, a standard number of visits and an attractive headline response time can look commercially sound. Its limitations only become apparent when several important assets need support at the same time.

Facilities teams should establish whether the stated response time still applies during exceptional regional heat. They should also understand whether it represents a guaranteed commitment or simply a target, and whether priority sites are treated differently when several clients are calling simultaneously.

The important question is not only what a provider promises on an ordinary Tuesday. It is what engineering capacity, escalation arrangements and parts availability it can offer when an entire region is experiencing the same extreme conditions. A service agreement cannot eliminate every failure, but it should make clear how foreseeable spikes in demand will be managed.

What a Heat-Resilient Service Agreement Contains

This does not necessarily mean replacing existing agreements. It means asking harder questions of them before the next heatwave, rather than during it. A service agreement worth relying on during extreme heat should:

Set servicing requirements according to manufacturer recommendations, asset condition, operating patterns and actual building demand, rather than relying solely on a generic interval.
Identify the assets that matter most to business continuity, including server rooms, cold stores and communications infrastructure.
Apply an appropriate response standard to those assets, rather than treating them the same way as comfort cooling in a less operationally important area.
Explain how response times, engineering capacity and escalation procedures will operate during periods of exceptional heat.
Establish which key components should be held or made readily available.
Be reviewed when occupancy, layouts, equipment loads or the use of the building changes.

How Certification Supports Scrutiny

Independent certification cannot guarantee performance during a heatwave, but it can help clients assess whether a provider has documented, auditable processes behind its service agreement. CORE Maintenance’s ISO 9001:2015 certification and CHAS Elite membership support that scrutiny. They should sit alongside more specific questions about engineering capacity, escalation procedures, spare parts and response arrangements during periods of exceptional demand.

Ask Before the Heat Does

The Met Office projects that summers as hot as recent years could occur every other year by the 2050s. Facilities teams do not need convincing that heat risk is increasing — they need a practical way to determine whether their current maintenance arrangements protect the organisation from it.

That check can begin with three questions about your service agreement:

What does the contract specify about servicing frequency, and what evidence was used to determine it?
What happens to your place in the response queue when several clients require support at once?
Are systems serving priority spaces treated differently from general comfort-cooling equipment?

If the answers are unclear or not recorded in writing, the service agreement may be exposing the business to more risk than its equipment. The next heatwave will not create that contractual weakness — it will simply reveal it.

To review whether your service agreement is ready for the next heatwave, speak to the team at CORE Maintenance about a resilience assessment before summer arrives.