What Is Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) & How FMs Use It

Planned preventative maintenance (PPM) is a proactive maintenance strategy – commonly combined with Facilities Management Software – that prevents unexpected equipment and machinery failures through regular scheduled inspections, servicing, and repairs.

Rather than waiting for something to break, PPM ensures that building assets are maintained at set intervals, based on time, usage, or condition, so that issues are identified and resolved before they escalate into costly breakdowns.

PPM gives facility managers the tools to schedule, assign, track, and report on every maintenance task across a building or portfolio of buildings from a single system. The result is lower reactive repair costs, longer equipment life, better compliance documentation, and a more predictable maintenance budget.

Facility managers typically apply PPM to the following building systems and assets:

• HVAC systems (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning)
• Elevators and lifts
• Lighting and electrical equipment
• Plumbing, gas, and water systems
• Fire detection, alarm, and suppression equipment
• Building fabric and exterior (roof inspections, guttering, grounds maintenance)

PPM is distinct from reactive maintenance (fix it when it breaks) and predictive maintenance (use sensor data to forecast when it will break). In practice, most facilities use a combination. PPM provides the structured baseline of scheduled tasks, while condition monitoring and predictive tools can be layered on top for critical or high-value assets. The comparison section later in this guide covers each approach in detail.

In the last year, over 1,800 Facilities Management Software buyers who used Comparesoft identified planned and preventive maintenance as their number one CAFM requirement.

“Planning is probably the most powerful tool you’re ever going to have in maintenance”

Kamran R. Zamir on the Comparesoft Podcast

Compare Planned Preventative Maintenance solutions to keep your facility assets in working order for longer. See pricing, view scheduling features & see how other facility managers use PPM.

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Why Facility Managers Use Planned Preventative Maintenance

Implementing a planned preventative maintenance schedule takes time and investment. It can be complex, expensive, and time-consuming. But the potential return on investment outweighs the initial risks.

In direct cases, PPM systems have:

• Produced 40% greater cost efficiency than reactive maintenance tasks
• Reduced overall maintenance costs by 12-18%
• Increased equipment inventory accuracy up to 98%
• Prolonged equipment life for 78% of users

In general, there are four standout benefits of deploying a PPM schedule.

1. Reducing Maintenance Costs and Improving Budget Control

Cost predictability is one of the strongest arguments for PPM. The SFG20 State of Facilities Management Report 2025 found that 75% of facility managers identified budget constraints as their biggest challenge, and 40% reported a budget decrease between 2024 and 2025. When budgets are tight, unplanned emergency repairs are the worst possible drain. They arrive without warning, carry premium pricing, and make financial planning extremely difficult.

Scheduled maintenance tasks have known costs, predictable timelines, and can be planned around operational needs. Parts can be ordered at standard pricing rather than expedited rates. Labour can be allocated during normal working hours instead of out-of-hours callouts. Over time, this creates a maintenance budget that is measurable, reportable, and defensible to senior leadership.

2. Extending Equipment Life and Reducing Capital Expenditure

Ageing equipment is the leading cause of unplanned downtime, accounting for approximately 44% of unscheduled equipment failures. Yet roughly 10% of facility equipment ever actually wears out, meaning the vast majority of mechanical failures are avoidable with proper maintenance.

A well-maintained HVAC unit, for example, can operate effectively for 15 to 20 years. Without regular servicing, that lifespan can drop to 10 to 12 years, bringing forward a significant capital replacement cost. PPM extends the useful life of assets across your building, from boilers and chillers to fire doors and lift mechanisms, delaying capital expenditure and improving your return on each asset.

3. Improving Workplace Health and Safety

Equipment failure creates risk. A ventilation system that is not maintained could lead to poor indoor air quality or, in extreme cases, a buildup of harmful gases. Faulty electrical systems increase fire risk. Poorly maintained water systems create conditions for Legionella bacteria. A recent study found that 68% of UK manufacturers experienced unplanned downtime in the past year, and in healthcare settings, infrastructure failures have been linked to over 2,600 delayed or cancelled patient treatments.

PPM provides the structured inspection and servicing regime that catches these issues early. Equally important, it creates the documented evidence trail that regulators and auditors now require. In a post-Grenfell regulatory environment, being able to demonstrate that maintenance has been completed, by whom, and to what standard, is not optional.

4. Meeting Building Compliance and the Regulatory Landscape

UK building compliance has become significantly more demanding since the Grenfell Tower fire. The Building Safety Act 2022, the Fire Safety Act 2021, and the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 have collectively redefined responsibilities, sharpened accountability, and raised expectations around building safety. For facilities management professionals, these regulations have moved from implementation to enforcement.

The key legislation that PPM directly supports includes:

• Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974: The foundational duty of care requires employers to maintain a safe working environment.
• Building Safety Act 2022: Introduces the “golden thread” of digital safety information for higher-risk residential buildings (18 metres or seven storeys and above), requiring auditable records of maintenance throughout the building lifecycle.
• Fire Safety Act 2021 and Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022: Require fire door inspections in communal areas of residential buildings every three months, along with installation and maintenance of secure information boxes and wayfinding signage.
• Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER): Requires that work equipment is maintained in a safe condition and inspected at suitable intervals.
• Control of Asbestos Regulations 2012: If asbestos is present, the dutyholder must maintain an asbestos register and management plan, with re-inspections at least every 12 months.
• Legionella (L8 Approved Code of Practice): Requires risk assessments and ongoing monitoring of water systems to prevent Legionella contamination.

What Facilities Benefit From a PPM Schedule?

PPM in Office Buildings

In office environments, PPM is most commonly applied to HVAC systems, lighting, electrical installations, fire safety equipment, and lifts. The primary objectives are maintaining a productive and comfortable working environment, meeting compliance requirements, and controlling energy costs.

HVAC maintenance is a priority. A 2023 Honeywell survey found that 97% of office workers believe good indoor air quality contributes to greater productivity. A failing ventilation unit does not just create discomfort; it directly affects the output and well-being of everyone in the building.

A typical office HVAC PPM schedule includes:

• Monthly inspections of filters, thermostats, and visible components
• Quarterly checks of coils, refrigerant levels, and general wear
• Annual servicing for duct cleaning, lubrication, and electrical component inspection

PPM in Residential and Housing

In residential and housing settings, PPM protects the safety of occupants and preserves the condition of the building fabric. Landlords, housing associations, and management companies are legally responsible for ensuring that properties meet safety standards, and PPM provides the structured framework for meeting those obligations.

Common PPM tasks in residential buildings include:

• Annual gas safety checks (a legal requirement under the Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998)
• Electrical installation condition reports (EICRs), typically every five years
• Roof and gutter inspections to prevent water ingress and structural damage
• Boiler and heating system servicing
• Fire door inspections in communal areas every three months (required under Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 for relevant buildings)

PPM in Education Facilities

Schools and universities operate under tight budgets with a duty of care to students, teachers, and visitors. PPM in educational settings focuses heavily on fire safety, heating and ventilation, electrical safety, and building fabric.

Key PPM tasks in schools include:

• Weekly fire alarm testing
• Termly fire extinguisher inspections
• Annual fire safety equipment servicing
• Regular inspection and testing of emergency lighting and fire exit signage
• Boiler and heating system servicing ahead of each winter term
• Legionella risk assessments and water system monitoring

PPM in Healthcare Facilities

Healthcare settings carry some of the highest maintenance stakes of any facility type. NHS backlog maintenance has reached £13.8 billion in England, with £2.4 billion classified as Critical Infrastructure Risk. Infrastructure failures in hospitals have been linked to delayed treatments, cancelled surgeries, and compromised infection control.

PPM in healthcare covers ventilation systems (critical for infection control), medical gas pipelines, electrical systems, water hygiene (Legionella prevention), fire safety, and lift maintenance. Given the 24/7 operational nature of hospitals, scheduling maintenance without disrupting patient care requires careful planning, and CAFM software is essential for coordinating this across large estates.

How Much Does Planned Preventative Maintenance Cost?

PPM costs vary by building size, asset complexity, number of sites, and whether maintenance is delivered in-house or outsourced. The total cost of ownership breaks down into four categories.

As a benchmark, every £1 spent on preventative maintenance saves £3 to £5 in emergency repairs. That ratio makes the investment case straightforward, particularly for facilities where unplanned downtime carries significant operational or safety consequences.

SFG20 and PPM: The UK Industry Standard for Maintenance Scheduling

SFG20 is the UK industry standard for building maintenance specification. Launched in 1990 by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA), it provides a library of over 2,000 maintenance schedules covering more than 70 different asset types. These schedules define the specific maintenance tasks required for each asset, the frequency at which they should be performed, and the competency level of the person who should carry them out.

For facility managers building or refining a PPM programme, SFG20 eliminates the need to research maintenance requirements from scratch. Instead of manually interpreting legislation and manufacturer guidance to determine what needs to be done, when, and by whom, SFG20 distils this into ready-to-use, colour-coded maintenance schedules that are updated dynamically as regulations change.

How SFG20 Works With CAFM Software

SFG20 is accessed through Facilities-iQ, its digital platform, which integrates with CAFM, CMMS, and IWMS systems via API. The workflow is straightforward: SFG20 provides the maintenance specification (the “what”), and your CAFM system handles the scheduling, assignment, and tracking (the “how”). When legislation changes and SFG20 updates a schedule, those changes are flagged in Facilities-iQ and can be synced into your CAFM system without manual re-entry.

Colour-Coded Task Prioritisation

SFG20 schedules use a colour-coding system to help facility managers prioritise tasks by criticality. Statutory tasks (those required by law) are distinguished from compliance-critical tasks and best-practice recommendations. This is particularly valuable when budgets are constrained, as it allows you to focus limited resources on the tasks that carry the greatest legal and safety risk.

Post-Grenfell Relevance

Following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the Building Safety Act 2022 introduced the concept of the “golden thread” of building safety information. For higher-risk residential buildings, maintaining accurate, accessible, and auditable records of maintenance throughout the building lifecycle is now a statutory duty. SFG20 schedules, when delivered through a CAFM system, contribute directly to this golden thread by providing a documented, time-stamped trail of planned maintenance activity.

What SFG20 Does and Does Not Cover

SFG20 covers Hard FM and M&E (mechanical and electrical) maintenance: HVAC, electrical systems, plumbing, lifts, building management systems (BMS), and related plant. It does not cover Soft FM tasks such as cleaning, security, catering, or landscaping. If your PPM programme spans both hard and soft services, you will need SFG20 for the hard FM component and your own scheduling framework (or CAFM-configured schedules) for soft services.

How AI Is Changing Planned Preventative Maintenance

Traditional PPM is calendar-based: you service an asset every month, quarter, or year, regardless of its actual condition. Research suggests that around 30% of scheduled preventive maintenance tasks are performed more frequently than necessary. AI is starting to close that gap by using real-time data and pattern recognition to make PPM schedules smarter and more cost-efficient.

AI-Powered Condition Monitoring

The most immediate application of AI in PPM is condition-based maintenance. IoT sensors fitted to assets such as HVAC units, lifts, and electrical switchgear continuously monitor vibration, temperature, energy consumption, and pressure. AI algorithms analyse this data against historical patterns to detect anomalies that indicate developing faults.

When readings cross a threshold, the system automatically generates a maintenance work order in your CAFM software. Instead of waiting for the next scheduled quarterly service or waiting for a unit to fail entirely, the intervention happens at the optimal time. A vibration sensor on an air handling unit, for example, might detect bearing wear weeks before it would cause a breakdown.

Predictive Maintenance

AI-driven predictive maintenance takes condition monitoring further. Machine learning models analyse patterns across historical and real-time sensor data to forecast when an asset is likely to fail, often 30 to 90 days in advance. This gives maintenance teams enough lead time to plan the repair during scheduled downtime, order parts at standard pricing, and avoid operational disruption.
The business case is strong. Predictive maintenance delivers 8–12% cost savings over calendar-based preventive maintenance, and up to 25–30% savings compared with reactive approaches. The global predictive maintenance market was valued at approximately $10.9 billion in 2024 and is projected to exceed $70 billion by 2032.

AI-Assisted Asset Mapping and Scheduling

Beyond condition monitoring, AI is also being applied to the planning side of PPM. SFG20, for example, now includes an AI-powered asset mapping module that helps facility managers match their asset register data to the correct maintenance schedules automatically. This reduces the manual effort involved in setting up a PPM programme and improves the accuracy of schedule-to-asset alignment, particularly for large or complex estates.
CAFM vendors are also integrating AI into scheduling optimisation, using historical completion data, resource availability, and asset criticality to recommend the most efficient task sequencing and workforce allocation.

What Are the Risks of Planned Preventative Maintenance?

High Upfront Costs

Implementing a PPM programme requires investment in CAFM software, potential SFG20 licensing, data gathering, and staff training. For organisations currently managing maintenance on spreadsheets or paper, the transition involves both financial and operational costs.

Extensive Planning and Data Gathering

Before a PPM schedule can work effectively, you need accurate data. That means an asset register covering every piece of equipment: make, model, serial number, location, age, and criticality. The SFG20 State of FM Report 2025 found that 37% of FM teams have asset registers that are no more than 50% accurate, and 6% have no asset register at all.

Over-Maintaining Equipment

Calendar-based PPM can lead to servicing equipment more frequently than necessary, particularly for assets that are lightly used or in good condition. This wastes labour hours and parts spend without delivering proportional benefit.

How to Create a Planned Preventative Maintenance Schedule

1. Choose the Right PPM Approach For Your Facility

Decide whether your schedules will be time-based (fixed intervals), usage-based (triggered by operating hours or cycles), condition-based (triggered by sensor data), or a combination. For most facilities, time-based PPM forms the core, with condition-based monitoring added for high-value or safety-critical assets.

2. Build Your Asset Register

Document every asset that requires maintenance: its location, make, model, serial number, age, and criticality rating. Categorise assets by system (HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire safety, building fabric). This register is the backbone of your PPM programme and your primary compliance record. If you are using SFG20, its AI-powered asset mapping tool can help match your asset data to the correct maintenance schedules.

3. Define Maintenance Tasks, Intervals, and Frequencies

For each asset, specify the maintenance tasks required and how often they should be performed. SFG20 provides pre-built, legislation-aligned schedules for over 2,000 asset types, saving significant research time. Where SFG20 does not cover a specific asset (particularly Soft FM assets), use manufacturer recommendations, industry best practice, and your own operational experience to set frequencies.

4. Implement CAFM Software to Plan and Track PPM Tasks

A CAFM or CMMS system is the most effective way to manage a PPM programme at scale. It automates scheduling, generates work orders, assigns tasks to the right personnel, tracks completion, and produces the compliance reports you need for audits. Free alternatives such as spreadsheets work for very small estates, but they become error-prone and difficult to scale as asset volumes grow.

5. Create a 12-month Calendar and Assign Responsibilities

Plot all PPM tasks onto a 12-month maintenance calendar. Assign each task to a specific person, team, or contractor, and set up automated reminders and escalation workflows in your CAFM system. Distribute statutory and high-frequency tasks evenly across the year to avoid bottlenecks.

6. Monitor, Review, and Optimise

A PPM programme is not something you set up once and forget. Use your CAFM data to track key performance indicators (KPIs), including: PM completion rate (target 85% or above), the ratio of planned to reactive work orders, mean time between failures (MTBF) for critical assets, and maintenance cost per asset. Review these metrics monthly or quarterly, and adjust frequencies, resource allocation, or priorities based on what the data tells you.

How PPM Compares to Other Facility Maintenance Strategies

PPM is one of several maintenance strategies available to facility managers. The right approach depends on your building type, asset criticality, budget, and operational maturity. Most facilities use a combination.

Reactive Maintenance

Also known as corrective, run-to-failure, or breakdown maintenance, reactive maintenance waits until equipment fails before action is taken. It requires minimal planning but carries the highest cost per incident. Emergency repairs typically cost three to five times more than planned interventions, and unplanned failures disrupt operations, create safety risks, and make budget forecasting difficult.

Best for: Non-critical assets where failure carries low risk and low cost (e.g., a light fitting in a storage area).

Periodic (Time-Based) Maintenance

Periodic maintenance performs tasks at fixed intervals: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually. This is the most common form of PPM and the foundation of most CAFM-managed maintenance programmes. Intervals are typically defined by manufacturer guidance, SFG20 schedules, or statutory requirements.

Best for: The majority of building assets, particularly where regulatory compliance requires documented, scheduled inspections.

Condition-Based Maintenance

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) uses real-time monitoring of asset conditions, such as vibration, temperature, or energy draw, to trigger maintenance only when indicators suggest it is needed. CBM reduces unnecessary servicing and catches developing faults earlier than calendar-based schedules alone.

Best for: High-value or safety-critical assets where failure carries high cost or risk (e.g., chillers, lifts, major electrical plant).

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance takes condition monitoring further by applying AI and machine learning to forecast when an asset is likely to fail. It delivers 8–12% cost savings over preventive maintenance alone, and up to 25–30% savings over reactive approaches. However, it requires IoT infrastructure, data integration, and analytical capability that many FM organisations are still building.

Best for: Organisations with mature data infrastructure and high-criticality assets where the ROI of predictive capability justifies the investment.

FAQs

How Long Does It Take to Implement a PPM Schedule?

Implementation timelines range from one month to 18 months, depending on the size and complexity of your estate, the accuracy of your existing asset data, and the CAFM system you choose.

A small, single-site facility with a limited number of assets might be operational within weeks. A multi-site estate with thousands of assets and a need for SFG20 integration will take longer, particularly if the asset register needs to be built from scratch.

How Long Does It Take to Implement a PPM Schedule?

On average, it takes between one and 18 months to implement a working planned preventative maintenance schedule. This is based on several factors, like the number of building assets, time taken to launch a CAFM system, speed of task completion, and budget.

What Should Be Included in a PPM Checklist?

A comprehensive PPM checklist should cover:

• Equipment details: asset name, location, serial number, and criticality rating
• Safety precautions and risk assessment documentation
• Manufacturer service documentation, including warranty status
• Specific maintenance tasks: cleaning, inspection, testing, lubrication, parts replacement
• Scheduled frequency (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually)
• Tools and materials required
• Historical maintenance records and dates of previous work
• Sign-off and completion records (essential for compliance audits)

What Is SFG20 and Do You Need It for PPM?

SFG20 is the UK industry standard for building maintenance specification, providing over 2,000 maintenance schedules that are dynamically updated to reflect changes in legislation and best practice. It is not legally required, but it is widely used across the public and private sectors as the recognised benchmark for demonstrating that your maintenance meets legislative and regulatory standards. If you manage an estate where compliance is critical (healthcare, education, social housing, government buildings), SFG20 provides a significant advantage.

What KPIs Should You Track for a PPM Programme?

The most useful KPIs for measuring PPM effectiveness are:

• PM completion rate: The percentage of scheduled PPM tasks completed on time. A benchmark target is 85% or above.
• Planned vs reactive work order ratio: A healthy PPM programme should see 70–80% of work orders as planned rather than reactive.
• Mean time between failures (MTBF): For critical assets, this shows whether your PPM schedule is effectively preventing breakdowns.
• Maintenance cost per asset: Tracks whether costs are stable, improving, or increasing for each piece of equipment.
• First-time fix rate: The percentage of maintenance tasks completed in a single visit, indicating whether technicians have the right information and parts.