What is the difference between planned and preventive maintenance?

The terms are used almost interchangeably. Planned maintenance is any work scheduled in advance; preventive maintenance is scheduled work specifically intended to stop a failure occurring. Both contrast with reactive maintenance, which is carried out after something has already broken.

How do you decide PPM intervals?

Start from the manufacturer's recommendation or the contract, then review against your own records after a year. A check that has never found anything across several cycles may justify a longer interval, while an asset producing repeated reactive work between visits suggests the interval is too long or the check is looking at the wrong thing.

What is a good ratio of planned to reactive maintenance?

There is no universal number, and chasing one is less useful than watching the trend. A drift toward reactive over time means the planned regime is losing ground, and a single building well above the others usually has an asset nearing end of life. The comparison only works if both kinds of work are recorded in one place.

Operations

Planned preventive maintenance (PPM), explained

What a PPM schedule contains, how intervals get set and reviewed, and why the planned-to-reactive ratio is the number worth watching.

Planned preventive maintenance is work carried out on a schedule to stop failures happening, as opposed to reactive maintenance, which is work carried out because something has already broken.

The distinction sounds obvious and the practice rarely is, because the intervals most organisations run were inherited rather than chosen.

What a PPM schedule contains

The asset: the specific unit, not "the boilers"
The task, what is actually done at each visit
The interval, monthly, quarterly, annual, or usage-based
Who performs it, internal or contractor
The record produced, including readings and any faults found

Attaching work to a specific asset is what later makes "every service this unit has had" answerable. Attaching it to a building only tells you something happened somewhere in it.

Setting intervals honestly

Intervals usually come from a manufacturer's manual, a previous contract, or whoever set the system up. All three are starting points and none is evidence about your building. After a year of records the schedule becomes reviewable:

A planned check that has never found anything in several years is a candidate for a longer interval, or it's not being done properly, and completion times will hint which
An asset generating repeated reactive work between planned visits has an interval that's too long, or planned checks that look at the wrong thing

The ratio worth watching

The single most useful number in maintenance is the proportion of reactive to planned work, per asset and per building. A steady drift toward reactive means the planned regime is losing. A building well above the others usually has an asset nearing end of life, and it's generally cheaper to find that in the data than in an emergency call-out.

This is the argument for holding both kinds of work in one system. Split across a planned schedule and a separate fault inbox, the ratio is invisible, and intervals never get revisited because nobody can justify changing them.

See facilities for how this runs across buildings, and recurring schedules for the scheduling mechanics.

Common questions

What is the difference between planned and preventive maintenance?: The terms are used almost interchangeably. Planned maintenance is any work scheduled in advance; preventive maintenance is scheduled work specifically intended to stop a failure occurring. Both contrast with reactive maintenance, which is carried out after something has already broken.
How do you decide PPM intervals?: Start from the manufacturer's recommendation or the contract, then review against your own records after a year. A check that has never found anything across several cycles may justify a longer interval, while an asset producing repeated reactive work between visits suggests the interval is too long or the check is looking at the wrong thing.
What is a good ratio of planned to reactive maintenance?: There is no universal number, and chasing one is less useful than watching the trend. A drift toward reactive over time means the planned regime is losing ground, and a single building well above the others usually has an asset nearing end of life. The comparison only works if both kinds of work are recorded in one place.

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