Five things per task, not one #
Every line on a PPM schedule carries more than a date, and the missing parts are what turn a well run schedule into an audit problem three years later.
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The asset and its location
Building, floor, room, plus an identifier that survives somebody renaming the site in a different system.
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The interval, and why
A legal requirement, a manufacturer's recommendation, a risk assessment, or a habit. These are not the same and they defend differently.
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Who is competent to do it
Some of these tasks can only be signed off by a specific competence, and the schedule usually does not know that.
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What evidence the task produces
A certificate, a report, a reading, a photograph. Evidence you cannot retrieve is evidence you do not have.
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What happens when it fails
Who is told, how fast, and what is done in the meantime.
Which intervals are fixed, and which are yours #
This is the distinction most schedules blur, and it matters because it decides what you can defer when a month gets difficult.
| Area | What the published position is |
|---|---|
| Lifting equipment used to lift people, and lifting accessories | Thorough examination every 6 months under LOLER |
| Other lifting equipment | Thorough examination every 12 months under LOLER |
| Either, under an examination scheme | Intervals set by a competent person, with a longer period based on a rigorous assessment of the risks |
| Asbestos management plan | Reviewed every 12 months, or sooner if necessary, with a record of the location and condition of asbestos containing materials kept up to date |
| Electrical equipment | Must be maintained in a safe condition. No legal requirement for annual testing; frequency follows the equipment and its environment |
| Fire safety | The responsible person must carry out a fire risk assessment and review it regularly, and maintain appropriate fire safety measures |
| Water systems and legionella | Identify and assess sources of risk, prepare a scheme, implement and monitor precautions, keep records, and appoint a responsible person, per ACOP L8 |
Two observations follow. First, the fixed intervals are fewer than people assume, and the risk based ones are more demanding, because a risk based interval has to be justified by an assessment somebody actually made.
The point a spreadsheet stops coping #
A spreadsheet handles dates well. It fails at four specific things, and the failures arrive in a predictable order as a portfolio grows.
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It cannot chase
A task that is overdue looks exactly like a task that is due, unless a person opens the file and looks. The schedule has no way of raising its hand.
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It does not hold evidence
The certificate lands in an email, the report in a shared drive, the reading on a paper sheet at the site. The schedule records that the task was done, and the proof lives somewhere else, which is the same failure described in site sheets and sign off.
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It does not know about competence
Nothing in a spreadsheet stops a task being ticked by somebody who was not qualified to do it, and nothing in it flags a competence that has expired.
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It cannot answer the question that actually gets asked
Nobody asks whether the schedule is up to date. They ask to see the last three examinations for one asset, in a meeting, now. Assembling that from a spreadsheet plus four folders takes long enough that the answer reads as uncertainty.
Where the judgement is #
Runs on rules
- Generating the schedule from intervals
- Reminding
- Chasing
- Escalating
- Filing
Needs a competent person
- Deciding what to do about a failed inspection
- Deciding whether a risk based interval is still right after a change of use
- Deciding whether an asset is worth maintaining or replacing
- Deciding what to tell a client when something has been missed
Those are risk decisions, often urgent, and they belong to a competent person.
The argument for taking the scheduling work off people is that the same person is currently doing both, and the administrative half is what fills their week. It is the same pattern set out in which parts run on rules.
What to check this month #
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Pick three assets at random across three sites
Try to produce, in ten minutes, the last three pieces of evidence for each.
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Take the ten most recent completed PPM tasks
Check whether the schedule records who did them, and whether that person's competence was current.
Most facilities operations pass the first test and fail the second, which tells you the gap is in what the schedule holds rather than in whether the work is being done. The admin time calculator covers the office hours the chasing consumes, and the evidence problem shows up again in the monthly client report, where the same records have to be assembled under time pressure.