5 Reasons You Need PPM Maintenance

5 Reasons You Need PPM Maintenance

What is PPM Maintenance? 

PPM Maintenance stands for planned preventative maintenance and is sometimes just referred to as planned or scheduled maintenance. The purpose of PPM Maintenance is to outline the maintenance requirements of a commercial building over a specific period (often 10 years), and will include budget costs to enable financial forecasting. A PPM is typically prepared by a Commercial Building Surveyor and is used on day-to-day basis by Property Managers, Asset Managers and Facility Managers. 

PPM Maintenance Schedules include an itemised schedule of the elements of a commercial property and often include mechanical and electrical installations. The maintenance schedule will outline the various maintenance requirements of these elements, including:

• Reactive maintenance – items requiring immediate attention, such as patch repairs to a roof covering where water ingress is occurring;
• Planned maintenance – single elements of work which will not need to be repeated for some time once complete, such as wholesale replacement of a roof covering;
• Cyclical maintenance – maintenance requirements which reoccur every year or two years etc., such as redecorating external joinery.

Summarising Maintenance Requirements 

First and foremost PPM Maintenance will summarise the maintenance requirements of a building. For some smaller commercial buildings these may be obvious to facility managers who regular visit properties, however for asset/property managers who spend less time at buildings this helps to put into perspective the condition of a property. Also for large multi-let properties such as shopping centres, even a site based facility’s manager may not be aware of all the maintenance requirements. This may be owing to the sheer scale of the commercial building and that they are continually dealing with reactive as opposed to planned maintenance. A PPM survey should result in less of a need for major, high cost reactive repair work. 

Cost Forecasting

One of the primary reasons for having a PPM Survey is place is to understand the level of expenditure that is required to keep the property in a good standard of repair. This will assist with asset and property managers setting appropriately levels of service to enable current and future maintenance works to be carried out without the need for capital expenditure. PPM Maintenance can also be adjusted to not exceed prior agreed service charge levels by prioritising essential works. In addition, it will enable works to be tendered with sufficient time to obtain competitive costs and understand how to complete the works in the most cost effective manner.   

Health and Safety 

A PPM Survey will identify any reactive/immediate maintenance requirements. Often items are identified which can and are posing health and safety risks to the occupiers and general public. Planned Preventative Maintenance will prioritise these works within year 1 and a building surveyor will notify the relevant individual of these risks at the time of the survey to enable urgent works to be undertaken. The PPM Maintenance Survey will also identify items which require updating and producing as part of commercial building owners/users statutory obligations such as periodic testing of services and updating of fire risk assessments. In addition, it will allow works to be planned allowing for works to be co-ordinated to avoid busy periods of a client’s operations etc.   

Increasing Longevity and Productivity

Often a commercial building components design life can be extended by undertaking interim repairs and maintenance as opposed to waiting for an element to fail before completing any works. A simple example of this is redecorating external joinery every three years which will avoid the requirement to replace components owing to timber decay and ultimate failure. More often than not a small amount of cyclical expenditure will greatly reduce the requirement for significant expenditure in a single year. This logic can be applied to almost all mechanical and electrical installations and a large number of building fabric components.

Protecting an Assets Value 

Undertaking planned preventative maintenance will ensure that a commercial building is maintained to a high standard, which should reflect the value of the asset. In addition, other elements can be brought into or co-ordinated with maintenance works, including upgrading the energy performance of building elements and services. It should also reduce the requirement for capital expenditure and make a property more attractive to a perspective purchaser or occupier.

At Commercial Building Surveyors, we offer PPM Maintenance (Planned Preventative Maintenance, PPM Surveys, PPM Schedules)  in the following locations: PPM Maintenance Bristol, PPM Maintenance London, PPM Maintenance Manchester.