What Is Reactive Maintenance? Breakdown Maintenance vs PPM

Reactive, breakdown, corrective: the terms

The words overlap and are used loosely in contracts, so it helps to separate them. The distinction matters for reporting, because work counted as reactive is usually read as a sign that something was missed.

• Reactive maintenance: the trigger. Nothing is planned; a failure, an alarm or a complaint sets the timing.
• Breakdown maintenance: the common name for the same thing in GCC contracts and job cards, often shortened to breakdowns or call-outs.
• Corrective maintenance: the work done to restore an asset after a fault is found, however it was found. EN 13306, the European standard for maintenance terminology, distinguishes corrective maintenance carried out immediately from deferred corrective maintenance scheduled for later. A fault spotted on a PPM visit and repaired a week later is corrective but not reactive, because the team found it and chose when to act.
• Run-to-failure: a deliberate decision to let a non-critical asset run until it breaks, because maintaining it would cost more than replacing it.

When reactive maintenance is the right choice

Run-to-failure is never appropriate for statutory and life safety systems such as fire alarms, sprinklers, emergency lighting and lifts, where scheduled inspection and testing is a legal requirement, or for critical plant whose failure stops the building. In a Gulf summer, chillers and chilled water pumps fall firmly into that category.

For other assets it can be a legitimate strategy. It makes sense when a failure is cheap, safe and quick to fix, and when maintaining the asset would cost more than replacing it. Typical candidates are:

• Low-cost, easily replaced items such as lamps, small extract fans, taps and minor fixtures
• Assets with a standby unit, where a duty pump can fail and the standby takes over while the repair is arranged
• Equipment near the end of its life that is already budgeted for replacement

Reactive maintenance versus PPM

The two are complements rather than opposites, but they behave very differently:

• Trigger: reactive work starts with a failure or complaint; PPM starts with the calendar or a usage count
• Timing: reactive work happens when the fault does, often out of hours; PPM is scheduled in advance and levelled across the year
• Cost: reactive jobs cost more per job, through overtime, call-out charges, expedited parts and secondary damage; PPM costs are predictable and budgeted
• Occupant impact: with reactive work the tenant has already been affected; PPM aims to prevent the disruption
• Measurement: reactive work runs against an SLA response and resolution clock; PPM is measured on attainment within a due window

Managing reactive work well

Measured over time, reactive work orders are the best guide to where the PPM schedule needs to change. Most FM teams track the planned versus reactive ratio, and a commonly quoted target is around 80% planned to 20% reactive. The trend on your own portfolio is more useful than a borrowed benchmark: rising reactive volume means either PPM is not being carried out properly or the assets need capital attention. MTTR shows how quickly faults are fixed, and the repeat rate shows which assets keep failing.

Reactive work cannot be eliminated, so the aim is to handle it quickly and learn from it. That depends on a few disciplines:

• One helpdesk channel, so every request is logged with a timestamp instead of arriving by phone or WhatsApp
• A priority matrix that sets response and resolution targets, with a make-safe step for emergencies
• Work orders linked to the asset, so repeat failures show up and can be investigated
• Earlier detection through BMS alarms and condition readings, so more faults are caught before an occupant notices
• Seasonal planning for the summer peak, when cooling complaints across GCC portfolios rise sharply

Common questions