Work orders and preventive maintenance software
Planned maintenance generates its own work orders on due dates, completion is verified with checklists and photographs, and cost accumulates against the asset rather than against a month.
Preventive maintenance software schedules recurring work against each asset — lifts, pumps, DG sets, fire systems — and raises work orders automatically on their due dates. Technicians complete checklists with photos and meter readings, and cost and compliance are tracked per asset.
Fix things before residents notice them
A society running entirely on complaints is running its maintenance reactively by definition. The first signal that a pump is failing is no water on the eleventh floor; the first signal that a DG set has a problem is that it does not start during an outage. By then the cheap intervention has passed and what remains is an emergency call-out at a premium.
Most properties do have AMCs covering this equipment, and most cannot say whether the visits under those contracts actually happened. The vendor invoices quarterly, somebody approves it, and the service report — if there is one — goes into a file nobody opens. The contract is being paid for; whether it is being delivered is unknown.
Preventive maintenance is the discipline of putting the work on a calendar and verifying it happened. It is unglamorous and it is the single largest determinant of whether a building’s equipment reaches its expected life or two-thirds of it.
- Reactive maintenance is the expensive kind. An emergency call-out costs several times the scheduled visit it replaced.
- Unverified AMCs are common. Most societies cannot evidence that the visits they paid for took place.
- Failures cluster. Equipment that has missed servicing fails together, usually in the season it is most needed.
Key capabilities
Scheduling is the easy half. Verification and cost attribution are what make the schedule worth having.
Preventive maintenance calendar
Every asset carries its own schedule — lift servicing monthly, pump inspection fortnightly, DG load test monthly, fire extinguisher inspection quarterly, water tank cleaning half-yearly — with the frequency taken from the manufacturer’s recommendation or the AMC terms.
The calendar view shows the coming month across all assets, which is how a facility manager sees that four major services fall in the same week and moves one. Scheduling conflicts are visible before they become a vendor turning up to a building that is not ready.
Asset-linked work orders
A work order is raised against a specific asset — lift 2 in tower B, not "the lifts" — so the service history belongs to the equipment. When that lift is eventually replaced, the case for replacement is its own history rather than an argument.
Ad-hoc work orders raised from a complaint attach to the same asset, so planned and unplanned work sit in one history. The ratio between them is one of the more useful maintenance metrics a committee can look at.
Vendor and technician assignment
Work orders route to whoever holds the contract for that asset, whether an AMC vendor or an in-house technician. The vendor sees only their own work orders, and their completion record accumulates against them.
Where an AMC covers the asset, the work order references the contract, which is what allows a quarterly invoice to be checked against visits actually performed before it is approved.
Checklists and meter readings
Each maintenance type carries the checklist that job requires, completed on the technician’s phone at the asset. A DG service records fuel level, running hours, oil pressure and battery condition; a lift service records the specific checks the vendor’s protocol calls for.
Readings captured over time become the trend that predicts failure. DG running hours between services, or a pump’s current draw creeping up month on month, are the signals that let a society replace equipment on a plan rather than on an emergency.
Cost tracking per asset
Every work order carries its cost — labour, parts, vendor charges — and accumulates against the asset. Over a few years that produces the number that actually matters for a capital decision: total cost of ownership per asset per year.
This is the analysis that resolves the recurring AGM argument about whether to repair or replace. An eleven-year-old pump that has cost more in repairs over two years than a new one would cost is a decision, not a debate.
PPM compliance reports
Scheduled against completed, per asset and per vendor, with overdue items named. That report is what makes an AMC renewal an informed conversation, and it is what a society needs when an insurer or an auditor asks whether the fire systems have been maintained.
Statutory items — fire equipment, lift inspections, structural audits — are flagged separately, because a missed service there is a compliance exposure rather than an operational one.
How it works
The schedule chases the vendor, rather than the facility manager chasing both.
Who it helps
Preventive maintenance is the module whose value is invisible when it works, which is why the compliance report matters so much.
Works with the rest of KeyMatrix
PPM and the helpdesk are two views of the same maintenance record: one planned, one reported. Keeping them together is what lets a committee see that a lift generating six complaints a month is also a lift whose last two scheduled services were missed. Split across two systems, that connection is never made.
The commercial side closes the loop. Work orders reference the AMC contract they fall under, vendor completion rates build the scorecard read at renewal, and approved vendor invoices post to the ledger against the right head and period.
- Helpdesk. Reported faults and planned work share one history per asset.
- Asset management. Service history, cost and warranty all attach to the asset record.
- Vendor management. AMC contracts drive routing, and delivery drives the vendor scorecard.
- Accounting. Work order costs post against the correct expense head and period.