There are many reasons why planned maintenance is more effective than reactive maintenance. As a property manager, it can be difficult to decide on the best approach for maintaining your properties. There are so many different views on the most effective facilities management strategies, so it can be tricky to figure out what works best for your business.
The best place to start is weighing up the pros and cons of different maintenance strategies and looking at how they align to your specific business goals. There are two main types of maintenance strategies that can help you better manage your properties—reactive and planned maintenance.
In this article, we’ll explore why reactive maintenance is less effective than planned maintenance, as well as how Elogs CAFM can help streamline this process. We will also cover:
What is planned maintenance?
Planned maintenance and preventative maintenance go hand it hand. Planned maintenance is focused on creating a strategy to plan and schedule maintenance activities to prevent unexpected equipment failures. This is vital for remaining complaint with government legislation; the HSE outline specific guidance around the maintenance of work equipment and why it’s important.
Preventative maintenance falls under the same umbrella—it is the act of performing the routine maintenance activities to reduce the risk of breakdowns and equipment downtime. This proactive approach that has been known to boost energy efficiency, cut costs and improve health, safety, and compliance.
What is reactive maintenance?
With reactive maintenance, the clue is in the name. Essentially, it means dealing with issues as they occur rather than planning in advance. So, for example, if a boiler in one of your properties breaks down, you would respond promptly and send out a service provider to fix the problem.
As the name suggests, types of reactive maintenance typically involve responding to maintenance problems as they arise rather than anticipating potential problems beforehand.
What are the disadvantages of reactive maintenance?
Although there are some benefits to reactive maintenance, there are also a lot of cons. Lack of planning could lead to unexpected expenses, risk to worker safety, shortened asset lifespan, and more. Here are some of the key disadvantages of reactive maintenance:
Unexpected costs
Reactive maintenance will cost you more in the long run. Without regularly maintaining your equipment and assets, you are more likely to experience unplanned downtime and unexpected emergency maintenance. This often results in expensive breakdown costs.
If you only respond reactively to equipment failures, you will have to pay a large cost to sort out the issue. There must be a fast response time which means paying for overnight shipping for the required parts and calling out a service provider last minute.
If it’s a failure that is a health and safety risk, you’ll need to get a contractor to fix the problem immediately—this often results in high-cost emergency callout charges. With reactive maintenance, this is often not budgeted for and can leave you unexpectedly out of pocket.
Planned maintenance is a more proactive approach which reduces the risk of unexpected equipment downtime and expensive repairs, meaning you save money in the long run. With planned maintenance, works are forecasted and budgeted for; this means that costs are agreed in advance with your service providers.
Elogs CAFM includes a PPM planner which allows you to streamline tasks and easily manage your scheduled maintenance tasks. If you’re looking to implement planned maintenance in your business, book a demo with Elogs today.
Health and Safety Risks
If you don’t check your assets and equipment on a regular basis, it could pose a threat to public and worker safety. Regularly keeping an eye on your properties is essential in ensuring you are complying with the latest health and safety regulations. HSE outline the regulations that place duties on the people and companies who own and operate work equipment—understanding these regulations will help you remain compliant. Without routine checks, there are health and safety risks that could be missed or neglected, meaning your buildings could become unsafe.
Planned or preventative maintenance is often a better strategy in ensuring health and safety. By maintaining your assets on regular basis, you mitigate the risk of potentially dangerous equipment failure. Planned maintenance can help you remain compliant and ensure that you keep your properties, and the people within them, safe.
Higher Energy Consumption
Reactive maintenance often leads to wasted energy and a general lack of efficiency. If appliances and equipment aren’t checked routinely then they tend to wear out and use up more energy. Inefficient equipment also leads to higher energy bills and costly repairs.
In comparison, planned maintenance ensures that assets and equipment are optimised for performance meaning they’re also more energy efficient. This also means that you’re more likely to ensure ESG compliance and contribute to a more sustainable future.
Shortened Asset Lifespan
When it comes to maintaining your assets, you shouldn’t be focused on doing the bare minimum. If your only goal is to ensure your equipment is borderline functional, it will wear out much quicker. This means you’ll need to replace it more often than if you were to optimise it for peak performance through planned maintenance.
By scheduling maintenance tasks for your equipment and assets using PPM, you preserve its value and keep it functioning at a high level for a longer period. Planned maintenance supports the lifecycle of your machinery and equipment, mitigating the risk of failure and extending the overall lifespan of your assets.
Is planned maintenance better than reactive maintenance?
Having looked at the pros and cons, it’s clear there are far more benefits to planned maintenance compared to reactive. To further prove our point, here are a few key stats that will make your decision easier:
- According to UpKeep, businesses can save up to 18% by using preventative maintenance instead of reactive.
- Predictive maintenance, a type of preventative maintenance, can reduce breakdowns by 70% according to Deloitte.
- Deloitte also claim that predictive maintenance boosts equipment uptime by 10-20%.
- In a study conducted by Plant Engineering, they found that 88% of industrial facilities use a preventative maintenance strategy.
- 60% of businesses think there is higher productivity with preventative maintenance strategies, according to a report by Advanced Technology.
Of course, even if you do implement planned preventative maintenance, you will still have to do reactive maintenance occasionally. Property issues are unpredictable, and you can’t always plan for everything.
However, solely doing reactive maintenance without any planned activities is never going to work long term. Planned maintenance is needed to help your business avoid unexpected costs, improve productivity, and ensure efficiency across the board.
How can Elogs PPM planner benefit your business?
Planned maintenance is more effective than reactive maintenance and a CAFM system can help you effectively implement preventative maintenance. With a CAFM system, PPM planners can efficiently track maintenance activities, monitor asset performance, and generate comprehensive reports for better decision-making.
Elogs CAFM allows you streamline facilities management, cut costs and maximise efficiency. Our CAFM system is backed by a 24/7 Service Desk which ensures support is always available and nothing gets dropped. We recently launched an improved PPM tool in the CAFM system which gives you more control of your PPM planner. This enables you to manage and edit your scheduled maintenance tasks ahead of time.
