PPM maintenance (planned preventative maintenance) means servicing, inspecting, and repairing assets on a schedule agreed in advance, so engineers find wear on a routine visit instead of after a breakdown. It runs in three steps: record each asset in a register, set its tasks and intervals, then schedule engineers and track every visit to completion. The completed visits become the service history and compliance records your customers expect at contract review.

You'll also see it called planned preventive maintenance. The terms mean the same thing. PPM itself isn't a legal requirement, but many of the checks inside a PPM programme are.

Why does planned preventative maintenance matter?

Without PPM, service businesses fall into a reactive cycle. Take a boiler that fails on a Friday afternoon. You send an engineer at emergency rates and order parts at short notice, and the customer may go without heating over the weekend. That pattern costs more at every stage: the callout, the parts, and the goodwill you lose.

Relying on reactive maintenance creates these risks across your contracts:

• Unplanned downtime: breakdowns disrupt customer operations and can trigger financial penalties written into the contract
• Higher repair costs: emergency callouts and urgent parts orders cost more than scheduled visits to the same asset
• Compliance exposure: missed statutory inspections create legal risk for both the contractor and the building owner
• Budget uncertainty: reactive work makes maintenance spend unpredictable for you and your customers

What are the benefits of a PPM programme?

With PPM, your engineers arrive on site with a clear task list, the right parts, and the asset's full service history already in hand. They spend their time on planned work, with fewer jobs raised under pressure.

Regular servicing catches wear before it causes failure. An engineer who visits a boiler plant quarterly can spot a deteriorating component during a routine check. Your team then has time to order the part and book a follow-up visit before the system goes down.

For a contract manager, that forward visibility changes the renewal conversation. You walk into the meeting with evidence of faults found and fixed ahead of time.

Automated PPM also shows up in compliance numbers. Sencat, a national hard facilities management provider, reported a 200% increase in compliance in nine months in its Joblogic case study. Automated PPM scheduling and tracking took one client's compliance from 30% to over 90%.

“Joblogic keeps us on track with compliance and gives us confidence that nothing is being missed.”

Sencat, hard facilities management provider

Which PPM intervals are legal, and which are recommended?

Only some PPM intervals are fixed by law. Others come from British Standards, manufacturer guidance, or the terms of your maintenance contract. Record where each interval comes from, so you have an answer when a customer asks why a visit is due. Keeping that evidence in one place also makes compliance reporting far less painful at audit.

“With Joblogic, we don’t have to chase compliance deadlines. The system keeps us on track, making audits stress-free and ensuring we meet safety regulations every time.”

Sam Allen, Director of Maintenance, East West Connect

How do F-gas leak check intervals work?

F-gas is the one interval that changes with the asset. For systems holding 5 tonnes of CO2e up to (but not including) 50 tonnes, the leak check is at least every 12 months. From 50 tonnes up to 500 tonnes, it is every six months. At 500 tonnes or more, it is every three months. Fitting an automatic leak detection system doubles each interval, and hermetically sealed systems holding less than 10 tonnes of CO2e are exempt from routine leak checks.

How does PPM maintenance work in practice?

PPM maintenance runs on three steps that build on each other. You record your assets, set the right tasks and intervals for each one, and schedule engineers against them all year.

What should a PPM asset register include?

An asset register should record every asset you maintain, with its asset type, site, manufacturer, model, installation date, and current condition. You can't schedule maintenance for an asset you haven't recorded, so everything else runs from the register.

Incomplete asset data causes problems for the whole contract. Missed tasks, incorrect visit frequencies, and repeat site visits trace back to a register nobody validated at the start. Getting it right during mobilisation protects the entire contract term.

QR code tagging makes the register useful on site. An engineer scans the tag on arrival and the system pulls up the full service history. There are no paper records to search and no calls to the office.

How do you set maintenance tasks and service intervals?

Each asset type needs specific tasks at defined intervals. These come from legal requirements, manufacturer guidelines, industry standards such as SFG20, and the terms agreed with your customer in the maintenance contract. The table above shows where the most common intervals come from.

Grouping related tasks into a single site visit reduces travel costs and cuts the number of access requests your engineers need to arrange.

How do you schedule engineers and track completion?

Your planner allocates each visit to an engineer based on availability, skills, and location, then tracks it through to completion. Completion rates, overdue visits, and asset condition data feed back into the next planning cycle.

If an asset starts generating reactive callouts between planned visits, that pattern shows up in your reporting. You can then shorten the service interval before the callouts eat into the contract margin.

What does a PPM contract include?

A PPM contract sets out what you'll maintain, how often, and on what commercial terms. Most PPM contracts cover these areas:

• Scope: the sites and assets covered, taken from the asset register
• Tasks and frequencies: the work due on each asset and how often each visit happens
• Service level agreements (SLAs): the response and completion windows you commit to (see our guide to SLA management)
• Pricing and invoicing: the contract value, and whether you bill in advance, in arrears, or per visit
• Records: the certificates and job sheets your customer receives after each visit

The PPM schedule is the calendar of visits those terms produce across the contract year. If a term changes at renewal, the schedule needs to change with it.

“Joblogic has allowed Lorne Stewart Facilities Services to simplify and efficiently mobilise contracts throughout the UK.”

Mark Sutcliffe, Chief Executive Officer, Lorne Stewart Facilities Services

How does PPM compare with reactive maintenance and other strategies?

The right strategy for each asset depends on how critical it is and what failure costs. PPM sits alongside three other common approaches:

Most service businesses run a mix of PPM and reactive work. Where a customer has signed a PPM agreement, those visits are a contractual commitment. Missing them carries the same commercial risk as missing an SLA on a reactive job.

A critical heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system serving a hospital ward needs PPM. High-value estates with IoT data can add predictive maintenance on top. A low-value storage heater in an empty office can wait for reactive repair. Getting that balance right across a large estate is where PPM planning has the biggest commercial impact.

How do you manage PPM maintenance with software?

A Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) brings PPM scheduling, asset records, compliance tracking, and reporting into one place. Without one, visit schedules sit in spreadsheets, compliance evidence needs chasing before every audit, and contract managers lose hours to admin. When that work runs on spreadsheets and informal messages between the office and engineers, gaps appear. SLAs slip, evidence goes missing, and renewals happen without a commercial review of what the contract delivered.

In Joblogic, schedulers set the visit frequency for each site, and the system raises the visits automatically at the agreed frequency, with SLA targets attached to each visit. You can mark key tasks as mandatory, so an engineer can't complete a visit until each task is done or a reason is recorded. Contract billing supports regular invoices, a fixed price per visit, or no billing for fully comprehensive contracts. At the end of a term, you roll the schedule on for the following year.

Managing PPM in Joblogic covers these key areas:

• Visit scheduling: set the frequency for each site, and the planned maintenance feature raises visits automatically at that frequency, ready to dispatch
• Asset register and QR tagging: engineers record assets during a site survey in the mobile app, then scan QR labels to pull up service history from the asset register
• Mandatory tasks: tasks marked as mandatory stop a visit closing until they are completed or explained
• Compliance records: gas safety certificates are completed and signed on mobile, then stored against the customer, site, or asset, while F-gas records capture every refrigerant transaction and leak check on mobile and update the F-gas logbook for each asset automatically
• Contract oversight: contract management monitors SLA adherence and alerts you to approaching deadlines, with dashboards for contract profitability, job completion rates, and SLA compliance
• SFG20: an SFG20 integration is available as an app in the Joblogic Marketplace
• Customer visibility: the customer portal lets customers view their asset registers and planned maintenance reports

PPM contracts are available on the Premium and Enterprise plans, and the customer portal is part of Enterprise. The plan comparison shows what each plan includes.

What should you do next with your PPM programme?

Start with your asset register. Every interval, visit, and certificate depends on it, so validate it at mobilisation or at your next contract review.

Next, record where each interval comes from. Separate legal requirements, such as the annual gas safety check for landlords, from British Standard recommendations and manufacturer guidance. When a customer asks why a visit is due, you'll have the answer against the task.

Once your PPM programme runs through a CMMS, you'll see the gap between what the contract requires and what your operation delivers well before renewal. If you'd like to see how Joblogic raises PPM visits and stores certificates against each asset, book a demo with our team.

Frequently asked questions

What does PPM stand for in a maintenance contract?

PPM stands for planned preventative maintenance. In a maintenance contract, it refers to the scheduled visits, inspections, and servicing tasks your business has agreed to deliver at set intervals.

Is PPM the same as preventive maintenance?

Yes. Planned preventative maintenance and planned preventive maintenance mean the same thing. Both describe servicing and inspecting assets on a schedule agreed in advance.

Is PPM a legal requirement?

PPM as a programme isn't a legal requirement, but many of the checks inside it are. Examples include the annual gas safety check for rented homes and F-gas leak checks, whose frequency depends on the system's charge. Other intervals, such as fire alarm servicing under BS 5839-1, are recommendations rather than fixed legal intervals.

Which assets need a PPM schedule?

Any asset with a compliance obligation, or whose failure disrupts your customer's operations, needs a PPM schedule. Common examples include gas boilers, air conditioning units, fire alarm systems, emergency lighting, water systems, and electrical distribution boards.

How do you decide the right service interval for each asset?

Start with any legal minimum, such as the annual gas safety check for landlords. Then apply manufacturer guidelines, industry standards such as SFG20, and the requirements written into the maintenance contract. If the contract is silent on intervals, manufacturer guidelines are the usual starting point.

What records does a completed PPM visit generate?

A completed PPM visit usually produces a signed job sheet, job notes, and a record of parts used. It also produces any relevant compliance certificates, such as a gas safety record or EICR. Held against the asset in a CMMS, they're ready to pull up for audit.

Can PPM software handle contracts with different visit frequencies across multiple sites?

Yes. A CMMS sets different service intervals for each site or asset type in the same contract, so you can service a boiler annually and a fire alarm every six months. In Joblogic, schedulers set the visit frequency for each site and the system raises the visits automatically at that frequency.