Air conditioning maintenance contracts: what's in one, and what isn't

Air conditioning maintenance contracts are easy to sign and hard to compare. Two proposals for the same building can describe what sounds like the same service and still mean quite different things the first time a chiller drops out on a warm afternoon. The difference is rarely the visit frequency on the front page – it sits in the scope, the exclusions, and the obligations that never move off the building no matter who holds the contract.

What follows is what a commercial agreement usually buys, what sits outside it, and the statutory duties that stay with the occupier.

What you are actually buying

Strip the covers off and a maintenance agreement is four things: a list of the assets covered, a schedule of attendances, an agreed task list for each attendance, and a defined route for work that falls outside the schedule. Most trouble later traces back to one of those four being vague. An asset list reading “air conditioning throughout” will not settle whether the rooftop package unit nobody knew about is included. Our maintenance contracts page sets out how we structure ours; what matters here is what to look for in any of them.

The scheduled half: visits and task lists

Attendance frequency should follow the plant, not a template. Run hours, age, criticality and the manufacturer’s own requirements all pull the interval around, and a tenancy split system does not need the same attention as a chiller serving a data room.

There is a baseline worth knowing. SafeWork NSW’s Guide to Inspecting and Maintaining Plant sets out that inspecting, testing, maintaining and repairing plant should follow the manufacturer’s instructions, and that where those instructions are unavailable or inadequate a competent person should set the requirements against relevant technical standards. It describes routine inspections occurring at least every three months, and periodic inspections annually and no later than thirteen months apart. If a proposal arrives with longer intervals and no technical justification, ask why.

For what belongs on each visit, our commercial HVAC maintenance checklist breaks the tasks down by month, quarter and annual cycle. An agreement that cannot produce a task list at that level of detail is selling attendance rather than maintenance.

The reactive half: the clause worth reading twice

Scheduled work is the easy half to agree. Breakdowns are where agreements differ, so read that clause slowly and check:

• How a fault is reported, and who in your organisation may raise one.
• What attendance the agreement commits to, and how that changes outside normal business hours.
• Whether breakdown labour is included or charged on attendance.
• Whether parts are included, excluded, or included up to a nominated value.
• Who decides when a repeatedly failing item is replaced rather than repaired again.

Our office hours are Monday to Friday, 7am to 5:30pm, and we offer after-hours call-outs for commercial and industrial sites. Whoever you engage, know in advance which number reaches someone when plant fails on a Saturday, and how that attendance is treated under the agreement.

What usually sits outside the contract

Most disputes are about exclusions nobody read. The common ones:

• Capital replacement – compressors, chillers and coils are generally a capital item, not a maintenance one.
• The refrigerant charge after a leak repair, which is commonly billed separately.
• Consumables beyond an allowance – filters, belts and drive components are often included only up to a nominated quantity or type.
• Repairs arising from the inspection: finding a fault is maintenance, rectifying it frequently is not.
• Reconfiguring setpoints, schedules and alarms through a building management system.
• Water treatment and Legionella compliance for cooling towers.
• Electrical work upstream of the plant, such as switchboard or submain changes, and access equipment for rooftop or confined-space plant.

None of those are unreasonable. They only become a problem when they surface during a failure rather than during the tender.

Refrigerant work and who may carry it out

Refrigerant is federally regulated, and the rules reach the business as well as the individual. The Australian Refrigeration Council explains the difference between the two authorisations: a Refrigerant Trading Authorisation allows a business or sole trader to acquire, store and dispose of refrigerants, while a Refrigerant Handling Licence is required for individuals who work with refrigerants or equipment in a way that could result in emissions. Eclipse holds ARC refrigerant trading authorisation AU35479.

One consequence matters for building owners: topping up a system that is losing refrigerant, before it has been tested and the identified leaks repaired, is not permitted. A unit topped up more than once without a leak test and repair is a question to ask, not a routine service item.

Cooling towers: a duty that does not transfer

If your building has a cooling tower, the heaviest compliance load in your mechanical services may not be in your maintenance agreement at all. NSW Health’s fact sheet for occupiers sets out that the occupier must install, operate and maintain the system in line with the Public Health Act 2010, the Public Health Regulation 2022 and AS/NZS 3666:2011, and must also:

• Have a competent person assess the Legionella risk and prepare a risk management plan, repeated every five years or sooner if required.
• Sample and test monthly for Legionella and heterotrophic colony count.
• Arrange an annual independent audit – the occupier cannot audit their own system.
• Give the local council completion certificates for the plan and the audit.
• Display the council-issued unique identification number on every cooling tower.
• Notify the council within 24 hours of a laboratory result at or above the reportable thresholds.

Some of that can sit inside a mechanical maintenance agreement and some deliberately cannot, the independent audit being the obvious example. The duty itself does not move: engaging a contractor does not transfer it. Confirm in writing which items your agreement covers, and check your own obligations with your local council or NSW Health rather than assuming.

Records are part of the deliverable

A service sheet left on a plant room bench is not a record. The same SafeWork NSW guidance describes keeping detailed records of inspections, testing, maintenance and repairs, with written reports signed by the competent person identifying the components inspected, the criteria used, the findings and the actions taken, and keeping them until the plant is relinquished before passing them to the new owner or controller.

Treat the reporting format as a contract term, and agree who holds the asset register, and in what form, before the first visit. You want records you can hand to an incoming manager and use to decide which item of plant is due for replacement rather than another repair.

Comparing two proposals fairly

Normalise them before you compare them. Put both on one page and line up the asset list, the number and timing of attendances, the task list per attendance, consumables included, what is chargeable, the breakdown clause, the reporting format, and which compliance items each party is taking on. Once those align you are comparing the same thing. In a strata scheme, add one step: check the scope matches what the owners corporation has resolved to fund, and that common property plant is distinguished from lot property – our strata and property page covers that split.

Next steps

If you are renewing an agreement and cannot tell from the paperwork which plant is covered or who holds the compliance obligations, a review of the asset list is the place to start. Our office hours are Monday to Friday, 7am to 5:30pm, and we offer after-hours call-outs for commercial and industrial sites. Call Eclipse on (02) 9832 9871 or send us your site details and we will go through your current scope and what a commercial HVAC maintenance program for the building would need to cover.

General information only. Requirements change and depend on your site, so confirm specifics with your certifier or insurer, or ask us.