Waiting until something goes wrong often costs more, causes more disruption and costs more than ensuring your appliances are in working order. Not only that, but it can also make it harder to keep your records up to date.
Planned preventative maintenance is scheduled maintenance carried out regularly to prevent faults from turning into breakdowns. It gives you a clear plan for testing, servicing and inspecting the systems your building relies on. Here, we'll look at how this helps your compliance and how to create your own PPM plan.
PPM is maintenance carried out at planned intervals instead of after something fails. A maintenance PPM plan usually covers the systems that need regular attention, such as emergency lighting, fixed electrical installations, fire alarms and HVAC. PPM is important because Most building systems don't fail out of nowhere.
PPM provides an opportunity to pick up on wear, damage and small faults that have built up over time. If those issues are picked up early, they're often quicker and cheaper to deal with. If they're missed, they can turn into inconvenient call-outs for repair, and failed inspections.
A damaged fitting found during a routine inspection is easier to sort than a full failure that affects a wider system. The same applies to electrical defects, ageing components and poorly performing HVAC equipment. Planned visits also reduce the need for emergency call-outs, which are often more disruptive and more expensive.
Systems that are checked and maintained properly also tend to last longer and perform more reliably, creating fewer sudden problems for the people using the building.
From a compliance point of view, planned preventative maintenance makes it easier to stay on top of recurring checks and to prove that you have done so.
Regular emergency lighting tests, routine electrical inspections, fire alarm servicing and HVAC maintenance all create a clearer audit trail when they're built into a schedule, which is a necessity if you need to show evidence during an audit, insurer visit or inspection. It also helps you keep the right certificates, reports and service records in one place.
For more information on the paperwork side, our article on demystifying compliance certificates explains which documents usually come out of inspection, testing and installation work, and which ones you need to have.
Planned preventative maintenance examples are easiest to understand by thinking about the everyday compliance tasks they should address. These often include:
A robust Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM) schedule should be based on more than simple calendar dates. At phs Compliance, maintenance frequencies are developed using recognised industry guidance, including SFG20 where applicable, alongside the specific requirements, operational risks, and maintenance history of each site. SFG20 itself recognises that maintenance strategies should be tailored to the criticality and operating environment of individual assets, rather than adopting a one-size-fits-all approach.
The process begins with the creation or review of a comprehensive asset register. Each asset is assessed according to its function, business criticality, statutory obligations, manufacturer recommendations, age, condition, and operating environment. Information is gathered from previous inspection reports, maintenance records, remedial work history, breakdown reports, and any available performance data. This enables maintenance frequencies to be established based on actual asset performance rather than arbitrary intervals.
Several key factors are considered when determining maintenance frequencies:
An effective PPM programme should not only define how often maintenance is undertaken but also what activities are carried out during each visit. This may include:
The resulting maintenance schedule should be dynamic, evidence-based and linked to asset risk. By combining recognised standards, maintenance history, site-specific data and engineering judgement, a PPM programme becomes more practical, proportionate, and effective.
This approach improves reliability, extends asset life, reduces reactive maintenance costs, supports capital planning, and provides duty holders with robust evidence that maintenance decisions are being made using a documented, risk-based methodology rather than simply following arbitrary calendar intervals. It also creates a clear audit trail demonstrating that maintenance frequencies have been selected based on asset condition, criticality, and operational need.
Yes! And for many businesses, that's the easiest way to manage it.
The majority of sites need more than one service. If they're all handled separately, it can become difficult to track what's been done, and what's due next, and you end up with a seemingly constant flurry of people coming onto your site to complete different tests.
At phs Compliance, we can help bring those services together into one planned preventative maintenance approach. That can include statutory inspections and testing, electrical maintenance, fire and security maintenance, HVAC support and more, depending on the site and the systems involved.
At phs Compliance, we can help you work out what a sensible maintenance PPM plan looks like for your building, including what should sit on the schedule and which combinations could save you both time and cost. Explore our services or get in touch to find out exactly how we can help your business.
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