Preventive maintenance
The planned ratio is the cheapest lever you have
Every facility team has a preventive maintenance schedule. The question is what percentage of it happens, whether you would know if that percentage fell, and whether you can prove the work when somebody asks.
- Schedules that generate and assign
- Compliance visible daily
- Completion evidenced at the asset
The economics
Why compliance rate is a cost number
Preventive maintenance is not bought for its own sake. It is bought because the alternative is three to five times more expensive and arrives without warning.
- 3 to 5x
- Cost of a reactive repair against the same work planned
- 91%
- Top-quartile PM compliance rate
- Above 80%
- Planned work ratio maintained by top performers
- Under $2.50
- Top-quartile maintenance cost per square foot per year
Figures are published industry benchmarks from IFMA and BOMA operating-cost surveys, not DFM customer results.
Why programmes slip
Reactive work always wins, until the slip has a number
A broken asset is louder than one that is going to break, so the preventive schedule absorbs every surprise. The most effective intervention is not a better schedule. It is putting late preventive work, by site, on the screen managers open each morning, because a number gets defended in a resourcing conversation and a feeling does not.
- Late preventive work counted daily, by site and by programme
- Escalation to somebody with the authority to move resources
- Plans built on recorded durations rather than on estimates
- Load drawn from a pool, so one absence does not stop a programme
How it runs
Set once, then supervise the exceptions
- 1
Write the procedure
The steps in the order your best technician performs them, with the evidence and readings the record needs.
- 2
Set the frequency
Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, or a calendar rule such as the first Tuesday.
- 3
It assigns itself
To an individual, a team, or round robin across a pool so the load spreads and the knowledge does too.
- 4
You manage exceptions
Completion is the default. Your attention goes to what is late and to what failed.
Common schedules
What estates put on a schedule first
- Daily equipment and plant rounds
- Cooling tower water treatment
- Generator load and fire pump churn testing
- Quarterly chiller and rooftop unit maintenance
- Fire door and life safety inspections
- HVAC filter changes
- Backflow preventer annual testing
- Fire alarm and suppression inspection
- Belt, bearing and lubrication schedules
- Emergency lighting monthly testing
- Roof and building envelope seasonal inspections
- Heating and cooling seasonal changeover
Questions people ask
- What happens when scheduled work is not done?
- It is counted as late, reported by site, and escalated to somebody who can act. The failure mode this prevents is a programme degrading quietly for two quarters.
- Can one procedure run at many buildings?
- Yes. One procedure, published to as many sites as you like, with its own frequency at each.
- Can work be assigned round robin across a team?
- Yes. A schedule draws from a pool, which spreads both the workload and the familiarity with the asset.
- How do we prove the scheduled work was actually performed?
- Completion is captured at the asset, with the tag scanned and the required evidence attached, so the compliance figure is backed by records rather than by ticks.
Keep reading
- Scheduling and DispatchMost maintenance schedules are built on estimates nobody has checked, which is why they are fiction by Wednesday and ...Open
- Assets and EquipmentRepair or replace is the most expensive recurring judgement a facility team makes, and in most estates it is made fro...Open
- Equipment InspectionsMost equipment inspection captures a number and files it.Open
- Templates and checklistsFree inspection checklists, with every step listed.Open
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