What is planned preventative maintenance (PPM)?

In facilities and asset management, prevention is always better than cure. That’s where planned preventative maintenance (PPM) comes in – a proactive strategy designed to keep your estate running smoothly while reducing downtime, prolonging asset life and maintaining compliance.

In this post, we explore what PPM is, how it works, the benefits it brings and how you can implement it effectively using facilities management software.

What is PPM?

Planned preventative maintenance (PPM) – also known as scheduled or planned maintenance – is a proactive approach to asset management. It involves scheduling regular inspections, servicing and minor repairs on assets while they are still in working condition.

The goal is to prevent failures before they happen, avoiding the high costs and operational disruptions of reactive maintenance. Whether you’re managing an office block, a hospital or a manufacturing site, a strong PPM programme ensures your infrastructure stays safe, compliant and cost-effective.

What’s involved with PPM?

A successful PPM strategy requires structure and consistency. Key elements include:

• Asset identification – Begin by cataloguing all critical assets, from HVAC systems and lighting to medical equipment or production machinery.
• Routine scheduling – Set a maintenance frequency for each item based on its usage, manufacturer guidelines or industry standards (like SFG20).
• Documentation – Keep a detailed history of inspections, servicing and repairs for every asset.
• Regular inspections – Conduct checks on schedule to identify wear and tear before it leads to failures.
• Up-to-date records – Maintain digital logs to track maintenance activities and help inform future decisions.

Facilities management software plays a key role in managing this process – helping automate tasks, standardise schedules and give full visibility across your estate.

Benefits of planned preventative maintenance

A strong PPM strategy benefits your organisation’s people, productivity and profits. Here are some of the biggest benefits:

1.Reduced risk of business interruption

First, regularly scheduled maintenance of assets greatly reduces the risks of breakdowns and the interruption this can cause to company operations. Depending on the significance of the asset, a breakdown can be an incredibly inconvenient and costly problem. It may even require the whole company to come to a standstill while it is rectified.

Unplanned downtime can incur significant costs. Consider the outage that Facebook suffered in October 2021 (via Fortune) – it lasted less than 10 hours, yet the company lost over £73 million in advertising revenue. This is an extreme example, but it demonstrates just how much an organisation can lose if operations cease for even a few hours.

Planned maintenance schedules greatly reduce the risk of business disruption. Maintenance tasks that will require downtime can be scheduled in advance, allowing the organisation to plan and mitigate any financial damage caused.

2. Extended asset lifespan

Keeping assets in working order and preventing any breakdowns or failures, means they will be usable for much longer. Rather than need to repair or replace components on a regular basis, companies can rely on the same assets for an extensive period of time. This means:

• Significantly reducing the costs of regularly replacing components
• Not having to wait for required assets to arrive, reducing potential downtime
• Getting a greater return on investment on all purchased assets

Asset maintenance software can track the mean time to repair (MTTR) of your assets. This helps predict when assets are likely to break down, so you can schedule maintenance work to take place before this point.

3. Increased operational efficiency

In addition to assets running longer, regular planned maintenance will help them remain as efficient as possible. All equipment will naturally start to lose efficiency over time, reducing its performance and eventually becoming a drain on resources.

Frequent, scheduled maintenance will extend this date significantly, meaning that asset performance will be preserved for longer. The more assets this applies to, the better the results will be for overall business efficiency and performance.

4. Organised workforce management

Planned preventative maintenance does not simply benefit asset efficiency, but also the efficiency of your workforce. If a company has a reactive approach to maintenance, technicians will frequently need to respond to urgent failures or disturbances.

This breaks up their schedule for the day, which can then mean:

• Previously scheduled tasks are delayed or overlooked altogether
• Urgent tasks may be conducted in a more haphazard way due to time restrictions
• Engineers’ days become more frantic and time-consuming, affecting their performance and happiness

With an established PPM strategy in place – overseen by a solution like Regime Manager – engineers will have much clearer, organised schedules. While it is impossible to predict or prevent all breakdowns, they will become far less frequent. Engineers can focus on upcoming tasks without the constant fear of being pulled away on an impromptu job.

5. Enhanced health & safety compliance

By storing all health and safety information in capable facilities management software, this can be assigned against each relevant asset in your PPM schedules.

This guarantees that all safety regulations, including SFG20 standards and service level agreements (SLAs), are met at all times. If this is not confirmed, it jeopardises the safety of those within a building and may lead to substantial financial penalties.

Instead, the right FM software will ensure these regulations are front-and-centre of your maintenance schedules. Compliance is assured, protecting the safety of everyone on-site and avoiding any liability.

6. Better budget management

The ultimate benefit of planned preventative maintenance is its potential to help companies save money in the long term. This ranges from ensuring a greater ROI from assets, to preventing any penalties for non-compliance.

Beyond this, having clearly defined PPM schedules empowers organisations to plan maintenance budgets with greater accuracy. Companies will be in a stronger position to know how much they need to commit to maintenance work each year.

This makes budget management much more exact. The risk of costs spiralling out of control due to unforeseen failures is greatly reduced, so budgets can be predicted more accurately.

Real-life examples of PPM

PPM is used across multiple sectors to keep systems running efficiently and safely:

• Healthcare – Routine servicing of diagnostic imaging equipment, surgical lighting and HVAC systems in hospitals.
• Offices & retail – Regular checks on lighting, lifts, heating and security systems to maintain a comfortable and secure environment.
• Manufacturing – Scheduled lubrication, calibration and part replacement for high-value production machinery.

How does PPM protect you?

A well-implemented PPM strategy helps protect your people, property and performance. It can:

• Reduce unexpected equipment failures and costly emergency repairs
• Extend the lifespan of high-value assets
• Improve energy efficiency and sustainability
• Ensure compliance with health, safety and environmental regulations
• Minimise downtime to maintain business continuity

What is planned unscheduled maintenance?

 

While it sounds contradictory, planned unscheduled maintenance refers to preparing for potential unplanned events. In other words, you pre-plan your response to equipment failures by keeping spare parts in stock, assigning resources in advance and setting up workflows in your FM system to handle breakdowns efficiently.

This blend of proactive and responsive planning keeps operations agile and ready for anything.

How to implement planned maintenance

To get started with a successful PPM strategy:

1. Create an asset register – Log every asset to be maintained with key details (e.g. make, model, location, serial number).
2. Set maintenance schedules – Determine the appropriate maintenance intervals for each asset type.
3. Define work processes – Create checklists, SLAs and health & safety procedures for each maintenance task.
4. Use FM software – Manage work orders, track completion, automate workflows and record compliance.
5. Monitor performance – Use dashboards and reports to analyse asset performance and maintenance trends over time.

How MRI Software can help

MRI’s facilities management software enables you to plan, schedule and automate your entire PPM strategy from one intuitive platform. From asset tracking and compliance to engineer workflows and performance dashboards, our solutions are designed to reduce risk and drive long-term cost savings.

Whether you’re maintaining a hospital estate, a corporate HQ or a nationwide retail portfolio, MRI Software gives you the tools to deliver safe, efficient and compliant operations. Contact us today to learn more.

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