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With a deferred maintenance bill nearing $1 billion, the University of Alberta is channelling the immortal words of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy novels — “don’t panic.”

James Allen, associate vice-president of operations and maintenance, told a board of governors meeting Friday that even though the approximate cost of $938 million is high, it is a “shifting landscape.”

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“As we conduct maintenance, as we do things with our infrastructure, that deferred maintenance goes down and then, with time and activity and with use, it goes up,” he said.

“It’s continually moving and sometimes it takes a while to catch up.”

Allen told the board that much like keeping a vehicle or a house in good order, preventive maintenance is great, but sometimes “you just don’t have enough money to do what needs to be done all the time.”

An estimated $450 million of the total is accounted for by “what should have been done, but hasn’t been done,” while the remainder is part of a five-year maintenance plan that includes the current year and projections over the next four years on what needs to be achieved.