Planned preventative maintenance schedules

Every building runs on equipment that will eventually fail. The only real choice is whether you find out on your own schedule or on the equipment's - during a busy trading day, in front of customers, with an emergency call-out rate attached. Planned preventative maintenance is how facilities teams take that choice back.

Planned versus reactive maintenance

Reactive maintenance waits for something to break, then pays to fix it - usually at the worst time, often with knock-on damage and lost trading. Planned maintenance services assets before they fail, at intervals chosen to keep them reliable. Reactive work never disappears entirely, but a good PPM programme shrinks it to genuine surprises rather than predictable failures.

What goes on a PPM schedule

Start with the statutory and standard-driven items, because these are non-negotiable and often carry their own certificates:

Then add discretionary asset-care tasks that protect value and appearance: lighting replacement, floor maintenance and coatings, painting and decorating cycles, and general fabric repairs. Arkomax delivers most of these in-house, from LED lighting and coatings to flooring and handyman services.

How to build a schedule

• Build an asset register: list what you have, where it is, and its condition.
• Set frequencies: use statute, standards and manufacturer guidance, then adjust for how hard each asset works.
• Put the statutory items in first: they are fixed points the rest of the plan works around.
• Assign an owner to every task, so responsibility is never ambiguous.
• Record everything: dates, results, certificates and the next due date.
• Review the plan when the building, layout or use changes.

The payoff

Frequently asked questions

• What is the difference between PPM and reactive maintenance?

  PPM services and checks assets on a planned schedule to stop failures before they happen. Reactive maintenance fixes things after they break. PPM does not remove reactive work entirely, but it greatly reduces it and makes costs predictable.
• What must be on a PPM schedule by law?

  Statutory and standard-driven checks come first - emergency lighting (IS 3217), fire detection (IS 3218), fire extinguishers (I.S. 291) and electrical equipment safety, among others. These carry certificates and fixed frequencies, so they anchor the schedule.
• Can one contractor cover a whole PPM programme?

  Yes. Arkomax combines statutory checks with in-house trades - lighting, coatings, flooring, cleaning, handyman and fit-out - so a single partner can plan the schedule and carry out most of the work on it.