Glossary

Preventive Maintenance (PM) Program

Also known as: PM Program, Scheduled Maintenance Program, PM

A scheduled, calendar- or condition-based regimen of routine inspection, servicing, and component replacement performed on building systems to prevent failure and extend useful life, as distinct from reactive maintenance performed only after a breakdown.

PM programs cover items such as HVAC filter changes and manufacturer-specified service intervals, elevator maintenance contracts, roof inspections, and life-safety system testing, and typically generate a large share of a property's routine work order volume, with completion rate tracked as a standard management-company KPI and, in hospitality, a component of brand quality audits. Well-executed preventive maintenance measurably lowers total lifecycle cost and emergency capital spend relative to run-to-failure operation, which is why lenders and buyers treat a lapsed or thin PM history as a leading indicator of an understated deferred maintenance backlog even when current financial performance looks stable. Practitioners distinguish preventive maintenance (time- or usage-based) from predictive maintenance (condition- or sensor-based, typically driven by building automation system data) and from purely corrective maintenance — the mix and discipline across these three approaches is a core differentiator between well- and poorly-run operating platforms.