What is Facility Maintenance?

Definition

Facility maintenance covers the full range of tasks and actions necessary to maintain the form and function of a commercial facility.  

Why it Matters

There are several types of facility maintenance, each of which builds on the previous.

First, there is reactive maintenance, where operators run systems until there is a failure before any fixes are made. Generally, this is a money-losing strategy, but it can be the right move for smaller systems when resources are constrained.

Next, there is preventative maintenance, where operators do a series of rounds and inspections on equipment to ensure proper functions. For a long time, the information from these inspections was recorded on pen and paper. More recently, these inputs are going into mobile apps so the data is accessible at a later date and can be trended over time.

Building on that, data from sensors can move a significant portion preventative maintenance to conditions-based maintenance, where tasks are only completed when the data indicates it is necessary. The common example here is that cars should be brought in for inspection every 10,000 miles, not every 12 months. The same is true for facility maintenance.

Finally, there is predictive maintenance, where data is analyzed by sophisticated algorithms and machine learning to identify failure patterns that would not otherwise be recognized.