Factors to consider when reviewing a maintenance regime

An organisation’s plant and equipment are physical assets that need to be properly maintained to ensure that they are fit for purpose and continue to function as efficiently and effectively as possible.
 

There can be many drivers for ensuring items of plant and equipment are well-maintained, from financial and business continuity to legal reasons. There are many pieces of health and safety legislation that make reference to maintenance.

Effective maintenance, as well as giving legislative assurance, can:

• prevent harm to occupiers and/or operatives

• ensure assets do not deteriorate and remain fit for purpose during their expected life cycle

• ensure that the maintenance of facilities through their lifetime is cost-effective

• ensure the organisation remains as productive as possible and maintains continuity of service delivery.

There can be many inputs to the review of the maintenance regime not least an evaluation of the various maintenance methods available. However, this will also be linked to other factors such as maintenance performance, asset performance and service delivery. Additional inputs may include:

• information and recommendations from the manufacturer on maintenance

• legislative and Approved Code of Practice guidance requirements

• history of the equipment and its use

• risk assessments and unwanted event findings.

A key factor in the overall planning is the current condition of the plant and equipment. Therefore, the review should identify the organisation’s assets, what they do and how critical they are to the organisation’s work activities and then it should make an assessment of current condition through a review of previous maintenance and associated risk assessments. This should also include how the condition of the assets may change over the life cycle period.

From the review process, the organisation should have identified the types of maintenance required. In general terms, these will fall into three categories as follows.

1. Planned maintenance including planned preventive and planned shutdown maintenance.

2. Preventive maintenance, which includes condition-based and reliability centred maintenance.

3. Unplanned maintenance including breakdown, corrective and emergency maintenance.