Maintenance issues

The decision to carry out a planned maintenance campaign may be based on:

• the maintenance plan;
• the result of condition surveys;
• routine inspections;
• in response to user feedback; or
• a policy decision.

The concept of prioritising planned maintenance activities is closely linked to condition standards. The condition standard provides the criteria to enable the maintenance manager to say 'these components or items require maintenance input, a repair, replacement or some form of activity'.

There may be enough funding to carry out all the required works, in which case there is no need to prioritise activities.

However, in practice financial constraints may limit the extent of the planned maintenance campaign in any one financial year - there may not be enough money to carry out all the maintenance works.

Prioritisation is a logical way of determining which works are carried out, which can be deferred, and in what order they are carried out. It determines the criticality of each planned maintenance item. This can be based on a risk matrix illustrated below, or based on a hierarchy of priorities or on costs, or a combination of all.

Prioritisation by risk

Figure 1: Risk matrix

The information from the condition survey, inspections or maintenance plan is reviewed for a given time span. A risk assessment is made based on the likelihood of the condition standard not being met in the timeframe and, if the condition standard is not met, what the likely impact on the organisation would be. The distinctions low, moderate or high may be used or a scoring system based on a numeric assessment, e.g. percentage risk from 0% to 100%, or more categories may be used (5 is a typical alternative to 3).

Where there is a high risk of the condition standard not being met and there is a high impact on the organisation, the maintenance task should be carried out.

Prioritisation schedule

A prioritisation schedule is simply a list of what would be affected if the maintenance were not carried out in rank order. The ordering (and indeed weighting, if required) should enable a decision to be made as to which activities are carried out.

As an illustration, a schedule of priorities may be ranked as follows:

• heath and safety;
• statutory requirements;
• primary importance to the core services or business of the organisation;
• security;
• cost;
• partial maintenance works acceptable; and
• low risk - low impact of failure; maintenance may be deferred.

The list of planned maintenance activities would be assigned a priority: in this example the list of activities that affect health and safety would be given the highest priority, followed by statutory requirements and so on.

Prioritisation by cost

There will be a cost of carrying out the maintenance works identified. If the works are not carried out for another year there may be a greater cost as further deterioration will have taken place. Furthermore, minor repairs or call-outs may be needed during the deferred period which increase the cost of retaining a component, and there is potential disruption and loss of service to the organisation.

The cost approach to prioritisation is unlikely to be the sole means of prioritisation. It is more likely that costs will provide information for the previous options of a risk matrix and a prioritisation schedule.