A burst pipe on a Friday afternoon. A boiler failure in the middle of Winter. An electrical fault that shuts down an entire floor. These are all incidents that can show how well a property is managed, and more often than not, they expose the gaps left by a maintenance strategy that leans too heavily on reacting, rather than planning.
For property managers, the challenge is knowing where to put the weight between planned and reactive maintenance, and understanding what each approach costs you when it’s misapplied.
What planned maintenance involves
Planned preventative maintenance (PPM) is the scheduled, systematic upkeep of a building’s assets, including its HVAC systems, fire safety equipment, lifts, electrical infrastructure inspections, plumbing, and fabric. Rather than waiting for something to fail, PPM operates on a fixed programme of inspections, servicing, and minor works carried out at intervals determined by manufacturer guidance, statutory requirements, or condition assessments.
Done properly, it produces a clear maintenance calendar. Contractors are booked in advance, costs can be forecast with reasonable accuracy, and compliance obligations (gas safety certificates, fire alarm testing, PAT testing) don’t fall through the cracks. It turns the building’s upkeep into something that can be planned for in a budget cycle rather than scrambled for in a crisis.
What reactive maintenance involves
Reactive maintenance involves recognising that buildings are complex and components can fail without warning, regardless of a PPM schedule. A broken door lock, smashed window, sudden leak, these all require a response, rather than a scheduled visit.
There are also situations where reactive property maintenance is the more cost-effective call. Low-criticality items with low failure rates often don’t justify the overhead of a regular servicing schedule. If replacing something when it breaks costs less than the cumulative effort of maintaining it indefinitely, the economics speak for themselves.
The problem comes when reactive maintenance becomes the default strategy and buildings run entirely on response and there’s no planned programme in place. At that point, costs tend to spike unpredictably and statutory obligations get missed.
How each approach affects your budget
The budget argument for planned maintenance is straightforward in principle: catching a problem early is cheaper than dealing with the consequences once it’s escalated. A boiler that’s serviced annually is less likely to fail mid-winter and require an emergency call-out, a temporary heating solution, and potentially a full replacement, for example.
In practice, PPM programmes require upfront investment. They carry fixed costs regardless of whether the maintenance turns out to be necessary. The key lies in identifying which assets and systems warrant the investment and which don’t.
Reactive works carry the opposite risk profile. The base cost may be lower, as you’re only spending when something breaks, but the ceiling is much higher. Emergency call-outs cost more than scheduled visits. Damage that could have been contained at an early stage becomes significantly more expensive once it’s spread.
Over a two-to-three year period, most well-run properties spend considerably less on maintenance when there’s a structured PPM plan in place than when they’re running reactively.
Making the two work together
The most effective maintenance strategies don’t treat planned and reactive as competing properties. They use PPM as the foundation and keep reactive capacity available for what can’t be anticipated. The proportion of reactive spend as a share of total maintenance cost is a useful indicator of how well the planned programme is functioning. If it’s consistently high, the programme needs reviewing.
At Dependable, we provide integrated hard and soft facilities management services that take the pressure off property managers and keep buildings performing throughout the year. Our planned preventative maintenance programmes are built around your assets, your compliance obligations, and your budget, with the flexibility to respond quickly when the unexpected happens.
If you’re reviewing your current maintenance strategy or looking for a partner who can manage both sides of the equation, we’d be happy to help.
Get in touch with our friendly team for more.
