When analysing how a building requires maintaining, and looking to obtain a facilities management contract, being aware of the types of maintenance in facilities management that are available can help to further your understanding.

Any building, and the assets contained within, require maintenance to keep them in proper working order at any point. From doors to air conditioning systems, every part of a building requires care and attention to keep the building performing at its most efficient.

To an outsider of the facilities management world, there are four philosophies, or strategies, to approaching maintenance. These four clearly defined philosophies help to curate an approach to facilities management that ensure desired outcomes for all involved.

What Are the Different Types of Maintenance?

There are four different types of maintenance: corrective, preventative, risk-based and condition-based.

Each type of maintenance suggests a different philosophy to asset strategy but, depending on the application of the maintenance types, can impact the longevity and correct asset management.

What is Corrective Maintenance?

Corrective maintenance is where a problem is identified while working on another order, essentially identifying the issue at the last minute. This can help to reduce emergency repairs but also means that issues may not be correctly identified, like they would through other more reactive strategies.

Examples of Corrective Maintenance

An engineer is deployed to fix an external door that has fallen off its hinge during a storm that was noticed during a security check.

Benefits of Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance ensures downtime is reduced, as issues are fixed quickly. There is also a reduced cost, as less planning is involved, instead more of a focus on fixing is applied.

Downsides to Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance is less of a strategy, and more of a fix-when-broken approach. While this take can be beneficial for companies with less machinery, for those wanting an approach that ensures corrections are minimal, it’s not always the best strategy.

What is Preventative Maintenance?

Preventative maintenance is taking preventive steps to ensure that corrective action is not needed. A preventative maintenance strategy will often involve routine inspections, IoT (Internet of Things) connected devices providing digital statuses and replacement of parts that have reached the end of their lifecycle.

Examples of Preventative Maintenance

A company has a digital record of all parts for their manufacturing machines and their expiry dates. They set up an alerting system to order parts three months before they expire and install them two months before the previous part expiry date.

Benefits of Preventative Maintenance

One of the biggest benefits of preventative maintenance is that unexpected downtime is reduced. The other big benefit is lower energy consumption. Preventative maintenance falls into the circular economy theory and is also more eco-conscious.

Downsides to Preventative Maintenance

While preventative can save money in the long run, the immediate and tangible costs to the business are higher than other strategies. For example, a facility will need to have extra staff to carry out routine inspections, as well as recording all machines and parts on site.

What is Risk-Based Maintenance?

Risk-based maintenance prioritises maintenance on equipment that would create the most risk if it were to fail. This is a more unique strategy that is completely customised to each facility and requires a carefully planned project approach with easily broken-down formulas to assign the priority.

Examples of Risk-Based Maintenance

In a regular office, where the highest risk is a server going down and work not being able to continue, the server would be priority one for maintenance. In a manufacturing facility, the machines would be rated from highest to lowest priority in order of importance to process.

Benefits of Risk-Based Maintenance

One of the main benefits of risk-based maintenance is that the overall risk of total system failure is greatly reduced. Instead, it’s on a scaled measure whereby items that are more likely to affect total failure are maintained as a priority.

Downsides to Risk-Based Maintenance

Risk-based maintenance isn’t that effective when there are multiple high priority pieces of equipment that could all lead to total or major outage. It works well in companies that are highly reliant on a few major pieces of equipment.

Condition-Based Maintenance

One of the higher tech requirements, condition-based maintenance takes a series of data points and uses it to form an idea of when a machine is in early failure, and what action needs to be taken to prevent this from happening.

This is calculated using a P-F curve, where P is change in condition or performance is detected and F is functional failure. P is at the top of the curve and indicates a change in performance that leads to F, or functional failure.

Examples of Condition-Based Maintenance

An office printer sends an alert out letting people who use it know that it is low on ink and the cartridge needs replacing. This is the P, where performance change is detected.

The printer running out of ink and stopping work is functional failure, and the number of sheets between the P occurring and the F happening is the curve.

Benefits of Condition-Based Maintenance

Condition-based maintenance is incredibly proactive, as it means fixing equipment before a major failure occurs. However, in the early days where data is being collected to ensure a correct change in condition is flagged, there will be an inevitable false alarm or two.

Downsides to Condition-Based Maintenance

Condition-based maintenance suits companies that have equipment that have a stage of semi-degradation that means they can still function at a reduced capacity. This, however, doesn’t work for companies that when something breaks, it can be catastrophic.

How Anabas Can Help

Anabas has years of experience in applying the correct maintenance strategies to each facility, based on their needs. Get in touch today to discover more.