Unplanned maintenance
NRM3: Order of cost estimating and cost planning for building maintenance works, defines ‘unplanned maintenance’ (or unscheduled or reactive maintenance) as: ‘…reactive and non-emergency work activities that occur in the current annual programme (i.e. maintenance carried out to no predetermined plan). Activities may range from unplanned/unscheduled maintenance of a nuisance nature requiring low levels of skill for correction, to non-emergency tasks involving a moderate to major repair or correction requiring skilled labour.’
Business-Focused Maintenance (BG 53/2016), written by Jo Harris and published by BSRIA in May 2016, states: ‘Reactive or unplanned maintenance is the ad-hoc, unscheduled repair or replacement of assets when they fail. It can be cost-effective for non-critical assets to be run to failure, but the unpredictable nature of the work makes it difficult to manage for essential assets unless the response time can be reliably implemented.’
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