Planned Maintenance vs. Reactive Repairs: The Real Cost Difference

It's tempting to treat building maintenance as a 'fix it when it breaks' line item. In the short term, reactive repairs can look cheaper — no ongoing contract, no scheduled visits.

In practice, reactive-only maintenance tends to cost more over a 12-month period once you account for emergency callout rates, unplanned downtime, and the compliance exposure of running past-due inspections.

A planned preventative maintenance (PPM) schedule spreads the cost predictably, catches small issues before they become expensive failures, and — critically — keeps your statutory inspection dates on track automatically rather than relying on someone remembering.

The buildings that pass compliance audits with the fewest findings are almost always the ones on a planned schedule, not the ones responding to problems as they appear.