Preventive maintenance program: 7 steps to create it

The preventive maintenance program defines how and when to intervene on assets. Find out what it includes and the 7 steps to draft it

If you are a professional in the AEC sector, you certainly know that intervening on an asset preventing a failure is far better than intervening once the failure has actually happened.

For an adequate preventive intervention, it is essential to use the right facility management software. This will let you know in detail which assets will need preventive intervention, in what way and how often. This group of information is the core of a preventive maintenance program. But do we actually know in detail what it should include and what are the necessary steps to draw it up? Let’s find out in this article.

Whatis a Preventive Maintenance Program?

In a previous article we have already focused on what preventive maintenance is. We have learnt how its effective application passes through the recommendations of the manufacturers and a proactive monitoring of the assets.

Planning plays a key role in the success of this maintenance approach and is based on the implementation of a preventive maintenance program. It outlines the processes, procedures, tools, and resources needed to perform preventive maintenance and keep assets in good condition, reduce the likelihood of failure, prevent unexpected downtime, and extend the useful life.

What should a preventive maintenance program include?

The preventive maintenance program represents a roadmap that should include the below:

• the list of activities to be carried out in advance;
• the list of assets on which to intervene;
• the date and frequency with which the intervention should be carried out;
• the technician in charge of the intervention;
• any other additional information that can be useful for the implementation of the intervention.

Drawing up and implementing a preventive maintenance program helps to prevent a breakage failure and the consequent application of maintenance run to failure.

What Are the 7 Steps to Creating a Preventive Maintenance Program?

Although each maintenance program will be drafted and refined according to the asset and specific needs, in general we distinguish 7 steps that it is useful to perform for the preparation of a valid preventive maintenance plan. Let’s take a look at them.

1. Create a list of assets.
   For the successful implementation of a maintenance program it is essential to know in detail the asset on which you are intervening. The first step will be the creation of a list of the assets that constitute the whole building and on which it will be necessary to intervene in a preventive manner. For each resource, the following data should be specified:
   • manufacturer/producer;
   • identification code;
   • description;
   • position;
   • model specifications and serial number;
   • date of construction/installation;
   • purchase cost;
   • current conditions;
   • detected critical issues;
   • date of the last intervention;
   • date of the next planned intervention;
   • other necessary information.
2. Identify which asset falls within the scope of preventive maintenance
   Based on a series of variables, it will be decided, at this stage, for which assets it will be necessary to perform preventive maintenance. The assets choice will take into account several factors such as the below:
   • cost-benefit analysis;
   • issues analysis;
   • calculation of ROI (Return on Investment);
   • downtime;
   • maintenance costs;
   • frequency of repairs.
3. Identify preventive maintenance activities
   Once the assets are identified, the activities to be included in the preventive maintenance plan are defined. For each asset, the maintenance needs will be varied, of course, one way to determine them is to refer to the below:
   • manufacturer’s recommendations, included in the manuals of use and maintenance;
   • history of maintenance interventions;
   • ticketing to technicians;
   • any other maintenance programme previously drafted;
   • recommendations from professional organisations;
   • compliance and regulatory requirements.
4. Determine the frequency of the interventions.
   In order for a maintenance activity to be preventive, it is necessary that the frequency with which interventions are carried out prevents the occurrence of a possible failure. For this reason, it is essential to define how often to carry out the various types of intervention. It is possible to base intervals on:
   • time (in this case, the frequency may be daily, weekly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual);
   • use (this may refer to the hours of execution, the units produced or other measurements that indicate what use is made of that particular asset).
5. Maintenance plan
   That said, we have all the useful information to create our maintenance program, which will then be used by the entire team of technicians in charge of maintenance. To draw up the maintenance plan concretely, it is always better to rely on specific facility management software that help in maintenance planning, activity tracking and issue management;
6. Train the maintenance team
   Drawing up a good maintenance plan is essential, but it is also necessary that some tasks are carried out by the maintenance managers. Therefore, in this phase, the team is trained on how to intervene, on tools and equipment and technology to use. Documents and information will be subject to update;
7. Monitor and modify
   It is essential for the maintenance team to update the information in the maintenance program because it is subject to continuous monitoring and changes based on open tickets and information addition. Thanks to the maintenance activities and the performance of the assets recorded by the team on the specific maintenance and management software, it will be possible to analyse the KPIs for facility management specific for preventive maintenance and generate reports that will help you optimize the plan.

7 steps for a preventive maintenance program

How to implement a preventive maintenance program?

Drafting and applying a preventive maintenance plan can represent an initial allocation of resources that is not highlighted in run to failure. For this reason, acting reactively only once the failure has occurred is ofter the preferred option. Yet, the negative implications of this approach, such as the economic losses and the unexpected downtime are not properly considered. For the above reasons, it is useful to implement a preventive maintenance program, and the best way to do this is to start through a “pilot project”.

Applying the preventive maintenance program on a few but important assets will allow you to verify and demonstrate the advantages, in terms of time and costs, as opposed to a reactive approach. Once the benefits of preventive maintenance will be clear, it will then be easy to extend the maintenance plan to other assets as well.

As we all know, prevention is better than cure! This also applies to construction but in order to do so it is essential to follow a well-crafted plan and get the support of the right software. For this reason, I recommend the use of a facility management software that will help you improve the productivity of the maintenance processes and reduce the time and costs related to management.