Planned Preventive Maintenance
Maintenance performed on a fixed schedule regardless of an asset's actual measured condition — FM's default maintenance strategy, particularly for statutory-driven assets where the fixed cycle is itself the compliance requirement.
A planned maintenance schedule copied unchanged from the manufacturer's generic manual is not a maintenance strategy. It is an assumption that your building's duty cycle matches theirs.
Why this service exists
For many assets — particularly those with statutory testing obligations — a fixed schedule is not merely a strategy choice but the actual regulatory requirement; for others, it exists as a deliberately simpler, more auditable alternative to condition-based maintenance where monitoring infrastructure isn't justified.
What the service covers
- Schedule design and maintenance.
- Work order generation and tracking.
- Completion verification.
- Schedule review against actual asset performance.
Assets and objects
- Applies across virtually every hard-service asset category — this is a maintenance strategy cutting across asset types, not an asset category itself.
Who takes part
- Maintenance plannerRequired
Mandatory.
- Technicians executing the workRequired
Deliver the maintenance.
- FM operations managerSituational
Reviews completion and backlog.
What the service needs
- Manufacturer maintenance recommendations.
- Statutory testing requirements.
- Asset criticality ratings.
- Prior maintenance history.
How delivery runs
- 01Design the schedule from manufacturer guidance, statutory requirements and asset criticality, not from manufacturer guidance alone.
- 02Generate and track work orders (typically via CMMS/CAFM).
- 03Verify genuine completion, not just work-order closure — a closed work order and genuine correct maintenance are not the same thing, worth stating on the page directly.
- 04Review schedule effectiveness periodically against actual failure/condition data, adjusting intervals where evidence supports it.
What is delivered
- Completed maintenance records.
- Schedule compliance data.
- Verified work order closures.
From output to outcome
Delivered planned maintenance with verified completion.
Predictable asset reliability and statutory compliance.
PPM alone doesn't guarantee either outcome if schedules are poorly designed or completion isn't genuinely verified, a caveat worth stating plainly rather than treating PPM as automatically sufficient.
Where it gets tense
- Work orders closed without genuine verification of quality.
- Schedules that have never been adjusted since original commissioning despite years of actual condition data accumulating that could improve them.
Strategic, tactical, operational
PPM schedule design should explicitly weigh against condition-based alternatives for high-value, monitorable assets rather than defaulting to PPM everywhere by habit.
Backlog management — a growing PPM backlog is one of the most reliable early indicators of an under-resourced maintenance function.
Access scheduling (getting into occupied spaces, plant rooms) is frequently the actual bottleneck, not technician availability.
Performance indicators
- PPM completion rate against schedule
Baseline measure of delivery.
- PPM backlog size and age
Early signal of under-resourcing.
- Planned-vs-reactive maintenance ratio
The single most-cited FM maintenance KPI, and a genuinely useful one.
Risks
- For statutory-driven assets, PPM compliance is the compliance requirement.
Statutory context
For statutory-driven assets, PPM compliance is itself the regulatory requirement. See Statutory/Compliance Maintenance for the organisation-wide aggregation of this obligation.
Sourcing options
- In-house
Possible where in-house technical capacity exists.
- Single service
Typically embedded within whichever contract covers the underlying asset, rather than sourced as its own separate service.
- Bundled
Often part of a wider maintenance contract.
Technology and data
- CMMS/CAFM scheduling and tracking.
- Increasingly integrated with condition-monitoring data to support hybrid PPM/condition-based strategies.
Competencies required
- Maintenance planning.
- Asset criticality assessment.
Common mistakes
- Copying manufacturer-generic schedules without adjusting for actual building duty cycle.
- Treating work-order closure as proof of quality completion.