Key points
- Reactive maintenance responds to failures. Planned maintenance prevents them and covers statutory duties.
- Neither is "right" on its own. The aim is the right mix for each asset, based on how critical it is and what failure costs.
- Planned work gives predictable costs and fewer surprises. Reactive work is unpredictable and often more disruptive, especially out of hours.
- Shift the balance by prioritising critical assets, using fault data, and making sure PPM visits actually happen.
- Measure it with a small set of KPIs: PPM compliance, first-time fix, mean time to repair, SLA hit rate and repeat faults.
Reactive and planned maintenance defined
Reactive maintenance (also called corrective or breakdown maintenance) is work carried out after something has failed or a fault is reported. A fridge stops holding temperature, a dishwasher leaks, a light fails. Someone logs it and an engineer attends.
Planned maintenance is work scheduled in advance. The most common form is planned preventative maintenance (PPM): servicing at fixed intervals, such as an annual gas appliance service or a six-monthly fire alarm service. It also includes condition-based maintenance, where you act on readings or inspections, such as replacing a gasket when it starts to wear.
The British and European standard on maintenance terminology, BS EN 13306, uses the terms preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance for these two broad types. Most UK FM contracts use "PPM" and "reactive".
Some planned work is not optional. Fire alarm testing, emergency lighting, gas safety, pressure systems, lifting equipment and legionella control all carry legal duties. More generally, the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 require work equipment to be maintained in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.
How they compare
| Reactive maintenance | Planned maintenance | |
|---|---|---|
| Trigger | A failure or reported fault | A date, usage count or condition reading |
| Timing | Unpredictable, often at busy or awkward times | Scheduled, can be booked around trading |
| Cost pattern | Irregular; call-out, out-of-hours and urgent parts premiums are common | Regular and budgetable; risk of over-servicing |
| Disruption | Lost trade, closed areas, staff workarounds | Usually limited to the visit itself |
| Safety and compliance | Faults may go unnoticed until they cause harm | Statutory checks and inspections are built in |
| Asset life | Failures can cause secondary damage | Wear is caught early, which can extend life |
| Data | Tells you what has failed | Tells you condition before failure |
| Best suited to | Low-cost, non-critical items with spares available | Critical, costly, safety-related or statutory assets |
The cost and risk trade-offs
It is tempting to say planned maintenance always saves money. The honest answer is that it depends on the asset.
When reactive costs more
Reactive work tends to cost more per job. Engineers are sent at short notice, often out of hours, and parts may need express delivery. The bigger cost is usually indirect: a closed kitchen, a café without coffee, lost sales, food stock thrown away, or a contract caterer missing an SLA with its client. Those costs rarely appear on the maintenance budget, which is why reactive work can look cheaper than it is.
When planned costs more
Planned maintenance has its own costs. If you service a low-value item more often than it needs, or send an engineer to tick a box, you spend money without reducing risk. Over-specified schedules also take staff time and access to sites.
Risk, not just cost
For some assets the question is not about cost at all. If failure could injure someone or break the law, such as a gas appliance, a pressure vessel or an extract system loaded with grease, planned inspection and maintenance is required. For those, the decision is how to do it well, not whether to do it.
Letting some assets run until they fail is a legitimate strategy for cheap, non-critical items. The problem is when it happens by default because nobody planned anything. Record which assets are deliberately run to failure and why.
How to shift the balance towards planned work
- Know your assets. You cannot plan maintenance on assets you have not recorded. Build a complete asset register for every site.
- Rank assets by criticality. Ask what happens if each asset fails: safety risk, legal breach, lost trade, or minor inconvenience. Industry frameworks such as SFG20 classify maintenance tasks from statutory to discretionary, and you can use the same thinking.
- Cover the statutory work first. Make sure every legally required inspection and service is scheduled at every site.
- Use your fault history. Look at which assets generate the most reactive calls. Repeat faults on the same equipment are a sign it needs a planned regime, or replacing.
- Make PPM visits count. A visit that does not find or fix anything useful is wasted. Ask contractors for meaningful job sheets with readings, photos and recommendations.
- Close out remedials. Defects found during PPM should become tracked jobs. Otherwise they come back as reactive breakdowns.
- Train site teams. Daily checks by staff, such as fridge temperatures, filter cleaning and reporting early signs of trouble, are planned maintenance too.
Pick the five assets that cause the most disruption when they fail across your estate. Put a proper planned regime in place for those first, measure the effect on reactive calls, then extend.
KPIs that show whether it is working
A short list of well-defined KPIs, reported monthly by site and contractor, is more useful than a long dashboard nobody reads.
| KPI | What it measures | How to calculate |
|---|---|---|
| PPM compliance | Whether planned tasks are done on time | PPM tasks completed within their window ÷ PPM tasks due, as a percentage. Report statutory tasks separately. |
| First-time fix rate | Whether reactive jobs are resolved on the first visit | Jobs fixed on first attendance ÷ total reactive jobs attended |
| Mean time to repair (MTTR) | How long assets are out of action | Total time from fault reported to fault fixed ÷ number of faults |
| SLA hit rate | Whether attendance and fix targets are met | Jobs meeting the agreed response or fix time ÷ total jobs, by priority |
| Planned to reactive ratio | The balance of work | Planned jobs (or spend) compared with reactive jobs (or spend) |
| Repeat faults | Whether fixes last | Assets with more than one reactive job for the same fault in a set period |
Define each KPI clearly and agree the definitions with your contractors, especially when SLA performance affects payment. For example, decide whether the clock for MTTR starts when the fault is logged or when the engineer is assigned, and whether time waiting for parts counts.
An overall PPM compliance figure can look healthy while one site has missed its fire alarm service. Always show statutory compliance on its own, and drill down by site.
Making it work across many sites
Multi-site operators face extra challenges. Sites report faults in different ways, contractors vary by region, and head office often sees only invoices, not the work behind them. Getting the balance right needs consistent data from every site:
- One way for every site to log faults, with the asset identified.
- Standard PPM templates by site type, adjusted to each site's assets.
- Reactive and planned jobs in the same system, so you can see the full history of each asset.
- Costs linked to jobs and assets, so you can compare sites and spot outliers.
Fabric FM is being built to bring reactive and planned work together in one place, with each job tied to a site, an asset and a contractor, so the KPIs above come from the work itself rather than a spreadsheet. See maintenance management software for more, now open for early access.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Check the current regulations and guidance, or speak to a competent person, for your premises.
