Boiler failures rarely arrive at a convenient time, and for facilities management and estate teams responsible for hospitals, care homes, schools and hotels, heating and hot water can’t be off for long. The people in those buildings still need warmth and somewhere to wash, and the team needs a plan that works as well at 2am on a Sunday as it does on a Tuesday morning.

Why a plan matters before winter

Hospitality shows how little room there is for error in these situations. Hotels and restaurants have very small downtime windows for maintenance, and issues with HVAC or hot water can quickly lead to guest complaints, negative reviews and lost return business. 

Other sectors face a different kind of pressure. Employers have to provide a reasonable indoor temperature, and HSE’s guidance on workplace temperature suggests the minimum should normally be at least 16°C, or 13°C where much of the work involves rigorous physical effort. That is hard to meet when the boiler is down and nobody has agreed what happens next.

What a temporary boiler solves

A practical route back to heat is via a mobile boiler unit installed outside the property, providing heating and hot water while the permanent plant is repaired or replaced. On-site provision usually involves emergency temporary boiler hire, and providers such as Cedar Green supply units with their own controls, pumps, pressurisation units and expansion vessels so they can connect to the existing system. A site survey before any hire is worth having too, as an engineer can advise on which unit suits the building.

The NHS estate shows how much repair work can build up over time. NHS England’s estates data for 2024/25 puts the estimated cost of clearing NHS backlog maintenance at £15.9 billion, which it describes as the investment needed to restore buildings to a defined condition, excluding planned maintenance. With that much work outstanding, it makes sense for estates teams to plan for the day a boiler stops.

What to agree in advance

A good plan is mostly a set of practical answers, written down before they’re needed.

Capacity and fuel

This is a good place to start, as a temporary unit has to match the building’s heat demand and run on a fuel supply the site can accommodate. Hire providers typically ask for the fuel type, whether heating, hot water or both is needed, together with the length of hose required, so those details are worth having to hand.

Siting and access

Decide where a unit would stand, how a delivery vehicle would reach it, and how far it sits from the connection point, because that distance determines the hose length.

Call-out details

Most importantly, name who makes the call and who can approve the cost. There should be a chosen supplier with contact details, with the guaranteed availability to cover both nights and weekends. Put a named person and a direct number in the plan rather than a department, so there’s no confusion for those needing to make a call at 2am.

Good monitoring can reduce the odds of a breakdown. BDC has reported on predictive facilities management platforms that analyse asset performance continuously, helping engineering teams spot problems before they become costly failures. No system catches everything, though, so a written plan is still the safety net for the failure that gets through.

Testing the plan

However, that plan only helps if people know it exists. Regularly run through it before the heating season, check that all contacts and access details are still correct, and confirm that the people named can act without waiting for sign-off.

The plan should draw on the asset record as well. The Department for Education’s estate management guidance for schools describes an annual boiler inspection flagging a fault early enough to bring a replacement forward, listing an inventory of key components, such as boilers and pipework, with their life expectancy, as core information for maintenance planning. It also asks for works to be prioritised by likelihood of failure and by the impact of an element failing. This is the same logic that sits behind a contingency plan. Record the details of any hire, including where the unit stood and how it was connected, so the next call-out starts from a better information base. 

With those answers agreed in advance, a boiler failure becomes a problem with a known first call rather than a scramble.