Predictive vs Planned Preventative Maintenance: Which is Best For Me?

As a facilities manager, it’s your duty to make sure that your building is running safely and efficiently, all while ensuring legal compliance and managing your budget. 

Maintenance strategies are essential for meeting your responsibilities as a facilities manager. They help prolong and maintain a building’s assets, resources, equipment and infrastructure, all while saving time and money and creating a safer environment.   

There are several different maintenance strategies that FM professionals use, each with their own benefits. So, if you’re unsure of how they work and want to learn more, you’re in the best hands.  

SFG20 is the industry standard for building maintenance and has been raising maintenance standards for over 30 years, so we understand how essential these strategies are for organisations.  

This article will look at Predictive and Planned Preventative Maintenance, and how they differ. We will explain how both strategies work, helping you to gain a clear understanding of when they need to be applied and compare their pros and cons.  

What is Predictive Maintenance?

Predictive Maintenance is a type of proactive maintenance that helps to identify potential issues before the failure of an asset. It helps to maintain and prolong the lifespan of assets, resources, equipment and infrastructure. 

This type of maintenance strategy uses real-time condition-based monitoring either with or separately from historical data.  

This historical data could come from in-house knowledge generated from work-order and repair records, or from wider afield collection sources.   

By predicting possible breakdowns and acting on them in advance, you reduce the chance of unplanned failures and the associated maintenance costs that come with them.  

There are different types of techniques which can be used to monitor key performance parameters. Common examples include: 

Acoustic Analysis  

By monitoring sound frequencies on operating machinery, acoustic sensors can detect changes in sound patterns. 

Rotating machinery will particularly benefit from this technique as it helps to identify factors such as friction and stress, which could indicate deterioration. 

Acoustic analysis can also be used for processes involving fluid flow in pipes and pressure vessels. 

Vibration Analysis 

By collecting vibration signals through specialised sensors, a machine’s patterns can be compared to real-time data to detect when it’s out of sync. This can point to possible failures before they escalate. 

Vibration analysis is mainly used on equipment with rotating parts that use bearings. 

Infrared Monitoring 

Infrared monitoring is a widely used maintenance technique using sensors to look for abnormal heat signatures (the visible representation of an object's temperature).  

If hotspots and fluctuations are found, this can highlight potential failures before they occur.  

Monitoring the temperature of a machine can help to detect issues in machinery, electrical systems and even building structures.  

Oil Analysis  

Analysing a machine’s oil can help to improve performance, avoid malfunctions and increase its lifespan. 

An oil analysis process will measure properties such as temperature or viscosity and look for foreign bodies such as metal shavings which can indicate a failing asset. 

While some elements of this can be carried out remotely with electronic sensors or specialist equipment, you may need to collect and send samples to be analysed by a qualified laboratory professional. 

The Pros and Cons of Predictive Maintenance  

The Pros of Predictive Maintenance 

• Saves you money by reducing unnecessary repairs and replacements.  

• Helps you to avoid losing valuable time on unexpected breakdowns or carrying out unnecessary maintenance schedules. 

  

• Ensures assets are running properly to create a safer working environment for people using your building.  

• Helps to increase asset lifespan. 

The Cons of Predictive Maintenance 

• Investing in these types of sensor systems can be costly to start with. 

• Organisations that don’t have experience with these systems may find it complicated. 

• It can take some time to gather enough data to get predictions from the system. 

• As with all technology, things can go wrong, whether that’s data that hasn’t been recorded properly or a sensor that’s been disconnected, which can affect accuracy. 

What is Planned Preventative Maintenance? 

Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) refers to a series of planned maintenance procedures used to prolong the lifespan of an asset.

It involves performing scheduled maintenance tasks at regular, predefined intervals (such as weekly, monthly, or after a certain number of operating hours), regardless of the current condition of the equipment.  

As with Predictive Maintenance, PPM is also considered a proactive approach. 

Ideal for pre-planning maintenance budgets, keeping equipment running efficiently and increasing health and safety levels in the workplace, PPM is an essential part of maintenance. 

While some of this strategy is based on cost-effectiveness, it also ensures that you’re adhering to current regulations, whether that’s for health and safety or environmental performance. Failing to do so can lead to penalties and fines.  

Alongside Predictive Maintenance, there are other different types of PPM, which include: 

Condition-based Maintenance 

Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) is a process that uses sensors and other monitoring equipment to analyse and assess an asset’s condition in real-time.  

This real-time information helps to identify assets that need fixing or replacing and is typically applied to those with an essential operational function. 

Prescriptive Maintenance  

Using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Prescriptive Maintenance collects data that can be used to predict possible failures and then suggests specific actions to resolve issues. 

It’s ideal for maintaining complex equipment in sectors such as oil and gas, manufacturing and healthcare. 

Risk-based Maintenance 

Risk-based Maintenance focuses on prioritising resources for assets that carry the most risk should they fail.  

Data collection and predictive tools are used to define high-risk assets. These will vary from business to business depending on the impact their failure will have on the organisation. 

The Pros and Cons of Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM)  

The Pros of PPM  

• Prevents downtime and delays. 

• Keeps equipment running efficiently. 

• Increases safety. 
• Reduces costs by identifying any issues. 
• Reduces overall energy consumption.
   

The Cons of PPM  

• PPM can lead to significant upfront spending on labour, parts, and scheduling, even for equipment that may still be functioning well. 
• PPM can be time-consuming and require dedicated staffing, planning, and administrative coordination to keep schedules updated, manage documentation, and track compliance, especially across larger estates.  
• Scheduled maintenance may lead to unnecessary servicing or part replacements (over-maintenance).  
• Traditional PPM relies on fixed schedules, meaning without integration with condition-based or predictive systems, it can miss opportunities to optimise based on actual need or performance trends. 
  
  

Predictive Vs Planned Preventative Maintenance

Now that you’ve learnt how Predictive Maintenance and PPM work, you can see that while they are both proactive strategies for keeping on top of maintenance duties and preventing breakdowns, they work very differently.  

In short, Predictive maintenance analyses an asset’s condition using real-time data to predict when maintenance will need to be carried out, while PPM involves scheduling maintenance checks on a fixed basis. 

There are pros and cons that come with both, but ultimately the strategy you use will depend on a number of factors, such as the type of assets you’re working with and your organisation’s budget. 

Finding the Right Maintenance Strategy For You 

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when considering the different types of maintenance strategies.  

At SFG20, we want all facilities management professionals to have access to straightforward guidance to help with your maintenance responsibilities, just like the guidance this article has provided you with. 

That’s why we’ve created other expertly written articles to cover the other types of maintenance. To help you find the right maintenance strategy for your organisation, take a look at these other articles below.

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