Types of maintenance in facilities management

March 5, 2025

What is facilities maintenance management?

Any building and its assets require maintenance to keep them in proper working order. Facilities maintenance covers everything from access points to air conditioning systems and can be scheduled, ongoing or reactive to suit your corporate building.

There are four primary frameworks commonly used within facility maintenance, each guiding FM professionals on the correct approach. Below, we’ll explore all four, along with the benefits and considerations of each.

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What are the different types of facility maintenance?

Facilities maintenance is typically grouped into four main types: corrective, preventive, risk-based and condition-based maintenance. Each approach has its own conditions, advantages and limitations, depending on the nature of the assets involved and the environment in which they operate. 

To get the most value from your FM building maintenance, it’s important to consider a balanced approach that acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses of each type.

Corrective maintenance (CM)

Corrective facilities maintenance focuses on identifying and repairing faulty equipment and systems once an issue has occurred. These issues may be identified through routine checks or, for more serious cases, such as a lift breaking down, they could be flagged by non-technical staff and visitors.

This approach is often associated with reactive work where maintenance is triggered by failure rather than planned intervention.

The benefits of corrective maintenance

• Reduced downtime: Where issues are identified as part of other work, such as a worn component being spotted during a routine check, they can be repaired or replaced before a serious issue develops. This reduces the chance of downtime.
• Sustainable asset management: Depending on the equipment, the failure of one component can lead to damage to others. Carrying out timely corrective maintenance helps prevent further deterioration, protecting connected parts and supporting a longer overall asset lifespan.
• Lower short-term costs: Corrective maintenance may reduce costs, with components only being replaced when faulty or worn. A preventive approach, on the other hand, would incur costs even if the equipment was already in full working order.

Key considerations of corrective maintenance

• Higher long-term costs: While corrective maintenance can cut costs in the short term, as covered above, relying on this approach over longer periods could end up costing more. For example, the replacement of a costly component or the total failure of a system would incur emergency repair costs that weren’t anticipated.
• Safety concerns: Allowing equipment and systems to run until failure can increase the likelihood of serious safety issues. A sudden and serious failure of a key component can pose serious health and safety risks before there’s an opportunity to repair.
• Increased downtime: Although not as serious an issue as the health and safety implications above, increased downtime is a negative of corrective maintenance. A corrective approach relies on unplanned work carried out only when an issue is identified, meaning unexpected disruption to workspaces and staff. This can impact productivity and workplace experience.

Preventive maintenance (PM)

Preventive maintenance, also referred to as preventative maintenance, is all about being proactive. Under this approach, equipment and systems are maintained in line with a schedule that’s typically aligned with time passed and/or usage. 

The aim is to reduce the likelihood of failure by maintaining assets before problems develop. 

The benefits of preventive maintenance

• Reduced downtime and disruption: Reactive forms of maintenance, such as corrective maintenance, often lead to increased downtime and disruption. This is due to the lack of prior planning and replacement parts not being readily available. With preventive maintenance, replacement parts and the associated works are ordered and planned, minimising unexpected downtime.
• Safer working: Maintaining assets and equipment, rather than running them to failure, helps prevent serious failures that can incur higher costs and, more critically, cause injury.
• Improved budgeting and cash flow: Preventive maintenance can keep your equipment and systems in full working order for longer, which helps reduce unexpected and costly repairs. For this reason, preventive and scheduled maintenance helps support more predictable budgeting and cash flow.

Key considerations of preventive maintenance

• Less sustainable: As preventive maintenance is based on scheduled inspections and replacement of parts, some components may be removed before they’ve reached the end of their lifespan. Especially with a growing emphasis on sustainability and eco-friendly practices in facilities management, a blanket approach to preventive maintenance may not be compatible with your company’s ESG policies.
• Additional resources: With routine inspections of equipment, a preventive maintenance approach can require additional resources, such as more staff, time and a stock of readily available parts, all of which carry added costs.
• Greater oversight: Especially for larger organisations, as preventive maintenance across all sites and systems could require a significant number of asset schedules and stocks to oversee. This will require more substantial asset management procedures.

Risk-based maintenance (RBM)

Risk-based maintenance or RBM is a structured approach to prioritising facility maintenance according to the likelihood and potential impact of asset failure. Rather than treating all equipment equally, this method focuses attention on systems where failure would cause the greatest operational, financial or safety consequences.

Assets assessed as higher risk, either due to their critical function, frequency of failure or potential severity of disruption, receive more frequent inspection, monitoring and maintenance. Lower-risk assets are maintained proportionately.

By directing maintenance resources towards the areas of greatest exposure, organisations can improve reliability, reduce unplanned downtime and achieve better value from their FM investment. This targeted approach ensures effort and budget are allocated where they have the most significant business impact.

  The benefits of risk-based maintenance

• Improved system reliability: Prioritising and keeping key systems well-maintained reduces the risk of failure and prolongs their lifespan, which in turn adds further benefits.
• Reduced downtime: By prioritising frequent inspection and maintenance of high-risk assets, particularly those with severe consequences of failure or a greater frequency of failure, facilities teams can significantly reduce unexpected system outages. This proactive approach includes increased inspection intervals and maintaining an appropriate stock of replacement parts.
• Resources available for alternatives: Through prioritising high-risk systems, extra resources can be made available to develop and manage alternative systems in the event of a failure. This keeps things moving while repairs are carried out on the primary system, with a reduced impact on your business’s usual operations.

Key considerations of risk-based maintenance

• Less effective: In organisations with multiple pieces of high-priority equipment, a risk-based approach can spread maintenance teams too thin, reducing effectiveness.
• Significant short-term planning: Risk-based maintenance demands careful preparation. Teams must assess all assets and evaluate risks before prioritising maintenance. 
• Requires frequent reviews and updates: The level of risk fluctuates due to equipment age, usage and repair history, risk-based approach requires recurring reviews and updates.

Condition-based maintenance (CBM)

Condition-based maintenance, known as CBM, focuses on maintaining equipment and systems according to their current condition, rather than following a fixed schedule.  For example, under pre-agreed parameters, such as decreased performance. Maintenance teams assess performance through routine manual inspections or by using built-in sensors for continuous monitoring.

The benefits of condition-based maintenance

• Reduced downtime: Condition-based maintenance occurs while equipment is in use, minimising operational disruption and lowering the risk of failure.. Also, forming maintenance around your systems’ current condition reduces the chance of failure, which further reduces downtime.
• Improved reliability: Basing maintenance on the condition of equipment, rather than scheduled intervals, tailors your approach, boosting reliability.
• Improved safety:  Greater reliability lowers the risk of equipment failure, protecting staff.

The downsides of condition-based maintenance

• Expensive to implement: As condition-based maintenance often requires specialist monitoring equipment, staff training, and additional experts to analyse data, making it costly to set up.
• Incompatible work environments: Some instruments used to monitor asset condition are sensitive to environmental factors, meaning some areas may be unsuitable. To navigate this, maintenance professionals should adapt their assets and environments to fit or rely on more expensive manual inspections instead.
• Unpredictable maintenance schedules: Condition-based maintenance is triggered by performance issues, so there are no fixed maintenance intervals, making resource planning challenging.

Which type of facilities maintenance is right for me?

The right maintenance approach depends on your facilities, budget and business needs. Having a balanced strategy can be beneficial, but maintenance plans can be tailored to suit your operations.

Anabas has years of experience in creating the optimal balance of maintenance services for corporate offices, combining Total Facilities Management with bespoke services to meet your specific needs.

Get in touch using the form below to find the maintenance strategy that works best for your business.