We know how valuable your property is to you. Letting agents need to keep properties running optimally in order to maintain their value and keep tenants happy. Without proper maintenance, it is easy to miss faults in your system or structure, which could lead to costly repairs. This is where Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) comes in.
Putting an effective Planned Preventative Maintenance schedule in place keeps your property at its best for longer. Property managers across the residential and commercial sectors can use PPM to monitor the performance of a property, keeping it safe and ensuring ongoing compliance with the latest legislation.
What does Planned Preventative Maintenance involve? How can you implement it effectively? And how can it really benefit you? We cover everything you need to know.
What is PPM?
PPM stands for Planned Preventative Maintenance, more commonly referred to as simply planned maintenance or scheduled maintenance. It is a proactive approach to maintenance that ensures all your upcoming works, including Fire Risk Assessments, seasonal upkeep, and safety checks, are scheduled at the necessary intervals, with proof of service being generated once an assessment or task has taken place.
Implementing the right PPM will help you preserve the condition of your property, prevent problems from occurring, and avoid failures or breakages.
What are the benefits of Planned Preventative Maintenance?
PPM ensures that any potential problems are identified and addressed before they develop further, minimising repair costs and time spent on potentially disruptive works. For instance, if you have a lift in your block and breakage occurs due to missed maintenance, it will suddenly become unavailable to residents for an indefinite period. However, if you make sure to plan maintenance weeks in advance, you can minimise how long the lift is out of use and warn residents ahead of time.
Situations like this also show how a well-implemented PPM schedule can reduce maintenance costs by 12-18%, as fixing or replacing parts of the system is much more cost-effective than a full repair.
Other significant benefits include:
- Health and safety compliance. For example, a whole roof could collapse without regular inspections, presenting a major health and safety risk.
- Less need for major unplanned repair work as regular maintenance inspections reduce the risk of emergencies.
- More efficient use of manpower and budget — allowing you to spread your maintenance work and financial costs more evenly throughout the year.
- Meeting warranty requirements: PPM is a requirement for you to comply with many manufacturer warranties.
- Preserving and enhancing the value of your property.
Real-life examples of PPM
One misconception about PPM is that it is unnecessarily costly. In reality, without preventative maintenance, your commercial assets are at risk of losing business due to unforeseen equipment failures. What’s more, residential landlords can lose thousands of pounds in rental income if their property is in disrepair.
Some Planned Preventative Maintenance tasks are statutory and required by law to take place regularly. These checks are vital not only to the ongoing performance of your property but also to the safety of your residents — without a valid gas or fire safety certificate, you are risking the tenant's personal safety and your own legal protection.
How does PPM protect you?
Effective Planned Preventative Maintenance helps keep you compliant with all the latest legislation in everything from health and safety to environmental performance. Below are some examples of what PPM can provide.
Residential Property Management (Lettings)
- Gas Safety Certificate
- Boiler Service
- Property condition surveys
- Roof inspections
- Electrical Safety Standards
- Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)
Multi-occupied buildings (Leasehold Blocks and Social Housing)
- Fire Risk Assessments
- Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations (LOLER)
- Lift Engineering Insurance Inspection
- Cold Water Storage Tank Chlorination (LCA - Legionella)
- Emergency Light Testing
- General Health & Safety risk assessment & written scheme
- AOV Servicing
Software for PPM planning
Compliance is a key concern for any property manager, but with so many responsibilities on your plate, it can be easy to miss one of the many statutory safety checks that have to be carried out regularly. Failure to comply can even result in criminal prosecutions for the responsible person.
A properly implemented and managed PPM schedule will protect the underlying value of your building, reduce unnecessary expenses and cut reactive maintenance costs. It will also protect your business by ensuring you stay on top of statutory requirements like gas safety certificates or LOLER inspections.
Without the right tools, the workload of a Planned Preventative Maintenance schedule can quickly become unmanageable. That’s where we come in. Fixflo’s planned maintenance module can help administer an efficient, cost-effective and compliant maintenance schedule, saving you time and giving you greater peace of mind.
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