Preventive Maintenance

The word compliance typically does not bring about many positive thoughts or associations with most people. For many people compliance brings about thoughts of losing money or having downtime. It is typically something that is in the back of your mind until it suddenly becomes the biggest issue in your building overnight. A single inspection that was not completed, a single repair that was not documented, or a single incomplete maintenance log can bring about massive liability issues. Therefore, the same amount of respect and attention that is given to the production of a company and its budget needs to be given to the compliance of the preventive maintenance that is deemed to be preventative in nature. That is why this is something that risk leaders cannot afford to ignore.

One hour of a technician’s time to fix a problem after the fact can cost so much more to fix a problem before it happens in the first place. When a single failure of a piece of equipment can cost a facility in terms of fines, legal costs, and damage to reputation over a number of years, a single missed inspection and subsequent failure of a critical piece of equipment can have severe consequences. As a result, maintenance compliance must be a standing operating focus for any facility and cannot be something left until an inspection notice shows up at the door.

Why Maintenance Compliance Requirements Matter More Than You Think

The majority of maintenance compliance requirements revolve around the physical failure of equipment. These failures can be prevented with scheduled and properly performed maintenance. However, when no maintenance is performed, equipment can and do fail in unfortunate ways for workers, customers, and surrounding communities.

Maintenance compliance requirements can be complex for certain types of equipment or even industries. Most of the maintenance that is required for different types of facilities in order to meet certain regulations can be classified as high-risk. This means that in order to prevent injury or damage to property, regular maintenance must be performed. In many industries, it is typical to see industries that are considered high-risk for injury or for damage to property require the most complex of maintenance. Industries such as manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and food and beverage are just a few examples of the types of industries that would typically require the most complex of maintenance in order to meet certain maintenance compliance requirements. 

Many of the facilities within these types of industries will typically require regular maintenance for their fire suppression systems, HVAC systems, electrical systems, and their life-safety equipment. These types of systems are typically critical to the operation of the facility, and are often considered to be of higher risk should they fail. As a result, the most complex of maintenance requirements typically revolve around these types of systems in order to help ensure that they are operating properly and are able to function as needed in the event of an emergency.

Understanding Preventive Maintenance Regulations Across Industries

For many different types of facilities, there are usually a number of different pieces of equipment that must be maintained according to a number of different maintenance compliance requirements. For example, a typical manufacturing plant will typically have to comply with OSHA requirements for the maintenance of machine guards, the use of lockout/tagout procedures for the maintenance of machinery, and the periodic inspection of pressure vessels. 

Typically most maintenance is conducted using similar criteria for similar type of equipment or assets. However, in a single facility there are instances where the same type of equipment or similar type of equipment may not all of similar type of equipment or similar assets will be maintained using the same criteria. In many instances maintenance criteria will be based on the criticality of similar type of equipment or similar type of assets. A good example of this would be a buildings primary generators. These generators are used on a regular basis. The primary production lines in a manufacturing facility are typically used on a regular basis as well.  

However, a buildings backup generator(s) are used from time-to-time during an outage. Although the buildings backup generator(s) are used from time-to-time during an outage the same criteria may not be used for the maintenance of the backup generator(s) as are used for the primary production lines in the manufacturing facility. However, the same criteria must be used for the maintenance of the backup generator(s) as are used for the primary generators in the building. And all of the maintenance and documentation for the required maintenance of the backup generator(s) must be in compliance with the required maintenance criteria as well.

OSHA Maintenance Compliance: What Inspectors Actually Look For

OSHA is looking to see if you have done the work to maintain your equipment. They are looking to see if you have a program in place to maintain your equipment. They are looking to see if you have documented your maintenance activities. They are looking to see if you have scheduled maintenance activities completed on a regular basis. For example, if a machine guard was reinstalled on a machine, did you document the activity. Was the scheduled inspection of a piece of equipment completed on a quarterly basis. Does your documentation show that you completed the inspection on time for all required equipment. Facilities that have OSHA compliance as a part of their on going documentation activities, as opposed to a crash program prior to an announced OSHA inspection, typically do very well in OSHA audits. 

Preventive Maintenance Compliance Documentation: Your Best Defense

All work that is part of your preventive maintenance strategy should be documented. This can be stored in the form of paper records, or digital files. Regardless of the format that is chosen, each record should be complete, to the point, up to date, and able to be retrieved quickly. In an ideal world, all of the records for all of the work that is completed as part of the preventive maintenance strategy would be stored in one system. That system could be a software program that is specifically designed to manage the PM’s for a facility. Whether the records are stored in a paper log or in a software program, digital records have the advantage of being easy to update or amend as necessary. 

With good preventive maintenance software the generation of documentation around work completed can also be very automated. For example, in addition to recording details around the work such as parts used and inspection findings, the software can automatically record details such as the date and time of completion as well as the name of the person completing the work. This means that as long as work is completed correctly then the production of adequate documentation around the maintenance work becomes almost an automated byproduct as opposed to a painful additional administrative task that is completed after the event.

Maintenance Compliance Audits: What to Expect and How to Prepare

Audits can go in a couple of different ways. In the first, the initial review of selected equipment can provide sufficient information to the auditor to complete the audit or conclude the audit. In the second, an initial review of the records for a sample of equipment will reveal some problems. Those problems then can be investigated as required. Because so many maintenance records are now stored on computers, it is common for the entire record for a piece of equipment to be retrieved during the initial review and then all of the records examined. When the records are stored on paper, or in a spreadsheet on a computer, only selected documents or spreadsheets are typically reviewed at the start of an audit. It is not uncommon for the selected records to appear to be in order and for problems to be revealed in a more thorough review of the records later in the audit.

On the other hand, the facilities who have done a good job with their audit preventive maintenance compliance are the ones who treat every day like it could be the day before an audit. This means that documentation for completed work is completed in real time. Schedules for required work are followed for assets. There is a clear chain of accountability for work required for each asset. Typically, this means that there is a named technician for the work, along with a timestamp for the work completion and any findings from the work’s related inspection.

The end goal of compliance is to have records to support your facility’s compliance with industry regulations. Preparation for an audit should NOT be spent gathering all necessary documentation within an inordinate amount of time. If your daily operations are maintained within a software package to track and complete work, then the software should easily be able to produce reports for an audit in seconds. For example, it should list out all necessary maintenance for a sample of critical pieces of equipment. It should also be able to list out all of the necessary maintenance for a specific piece of equipment as well.

Compliance Risk Maintenance Management Can't Afford to Ignore

One approach to defining and managing the various aspects of compliance risk for maintenance processes is to outline the potential damage or consequences to an organization which would occur should it fail to complete the required maintenance for any reason. Note that in many cases, damage or consequences can be safety-related (i.e., cause injury or even death), but in many others, they can be purely financial, or a combination of both. Many fines associated with maintenance non-compliance are very high, and considered willful in severe cases, potentially resulting in additional financial penalty, and even in extreme cases, result in criminal prosecution for negligence. 

Moreover, fines are only the beginning, as organizations found to be in non-compliance with various regulations related to maintenance can face increased scrutiny from regulatory bodies in the future, potentially higher insurance premiums, and loss of insurance coverage for damages caused by failure to complete maintenance, as well as the potential for civil prosecution and resulting damages in cases where injury or death occur as a result of maintenance-related failure. 

The fines for less severe maintenance compliance violations can be in the tens of thousands of dollars while more serious offenses can cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and be considered willful. However, the greatest cost of a single maintenance compliance failure is increased scrutiny by the violating party after the fact, increased insurance premiums to cover the risk of failure, and even potential for civil lawsuits for damages to person or property. In some cases, the negligence of the maintenance program can even lead to liability of individual managers and safety officers.

In addition to fines, maintenance compliance failures can also result in the legal liability of individuals. Depending on the jurisdiction, this could include facility managers, safety officers and other personnel responsible for ensuring compliance. In order to assure compliance with all applicable laws and industry practices, maintenance compliance must be driven by the leaders of a facility, not left as a background task to technicians and others.

Industry Standards Maintenance Compliance Should Be Built Around

Industry standards maintenance compliance is a structure for a preventive maintenance program that is of low risk and is maintained to meet or exceed industry recognized standards for maintenance. In addition, many organizations are using the same framework to set up their maintenance compliance program. The end result of a facility compliance maintenance program is to allow a facility to respond to any compliance question and to be able to provide proof to anyone that the company is operating in a safe manner and is a well-run organization.

This is also where facility compliance maintenance connects directly to broader operational goals. A maintenance program built around recognized standards tends to also be a more reliable, better-documented, more efficient program overall — compliance and operational excellence aren't competing priorities, they reinforce each other.

Preventive Maintenance Compliance Software: Turning Compliance Into a System

Preventive maintenance compliance software is what makes all of this sustainable at scale. Manually tracking regulatory requirements, inspection schedules, documentation, and audit readiness across dozens or hundreds of assets isn't realistic without a system built for it. An asset maintenance management software platform centralizes every asset's maintenance history, upcoming requirements, and compliance status in one place, so nothing depends on someone remembering a deadline.

Pairing that system with IoT monitoring and predictive maintenance capabilities adds another layer of protection — real-time equipment data can flag developing issues between scheduled inspections, giving teams a chance to address problems before they become compliance violations or safety incidents. For facilities managing compliance across multiple sites or service commitments, resources like maintenance compliance with facility management software and SLA compliance made easy with CMMS go deeper into how the right platform simplifies these obligations at scale.

Building a Maintenance Compliance Checklist That Actually Works

A practical maintenance compliance checklist starts with a full inventory of applicable regulations and standards for your industry and location, mapped against every asset that falls under them. From there, each asset needs a defined inspection and service cadence, a designated responsible technician, and a documentation requirement that's built into the workflow rather than treated as an afterthought.

The checklist should also include a regular internal audit cycle — reviewing documentation completeness before a regulator ever asks for it. Catching a documentation gap internally, with time to fix it, is a very different situation than an auditor catching it first. Teams that want to go further can review our guide on how to achieve preventive maintenance goals with CMMS, which covers how to structure a program that meets both operational and compliance targets at the same time.

It's worth building this checklist collaboratively rather than handing it down from a single department. Maintenance technicians know where the practical friction points are — which inspections get skipped when time is tight, which documentation steps feel redundant, which equipment is hardest to access on schedule. Safety and compliance teams know which regulations carry the most risk if overlooked. A checklist built with input from both groups tends to survive contact with a busy facility far better than one designed in isolation and handed down as a mandate.

Making Compliance Sustainable with DreamzCMMS

Preventive maintenance compliance isn't a one-time project — it's an ongoing discipline that needs to be built into daily operations, not bolted on before an inspection. DreamzCMMS gives maintenance and facility teams the structure to make that discipline sustainable: automated scheduling, centralized documentation, real-time compliance status, and audit-ready reporting that doesn't require a scramble every time a regulator comes knocking.

The cost of getting compliance wrong — fines, liability, damaged trust, and in the worst cases, preventable injuries — is almost always higher than the cost of building a proper system from the start. Preventive maintenance compliance isn't the risk leaders can afford to treat as an afterthought; it's the discipline that protects everything else the organization has built.

Ready to see how much easier compliance becomes with the right system behind it?

Request your free demo of DreamzCMMS and start building a maintenance program that keeps you audit-ready every single day, not just the week before an inspection.