A preventative maintenance plan is a document that says what will be maintained, how, how often, by whom, and how the plan itself will be checked. Most sites have a calendar instead, which is the output of a plan rather than the plan, and the difference shows the first time somebody asks why an interval is what it is. A written plan answers that; a calendar cannot. This page is what belongs in the document, in the order that makes it defensible to an auditor, a regulator or a new maintenance manager.
Scope: what is in and what is deliberately out
The register, and the assets you have decided to run to failure with the reason beside each. The out-list is the part that gets omitted and the part that protects you: a plan that silently excludes things looks like an oversight, and a plan that excludes them explicitly looks like a decision.
Strategy and interval per asset, with the source
Time-based, usage-based, condition-based or run to failure, with the interval and where it came from: manufacturer, regulation, or your own findings. Naming the source is what lets the next person change it responsibly rather than either preserving it forever or overwriting it on a hunch.
Load, in hours, against the people you have
180 assets at four tasks a year at 1.1 hours is 66 technician hours a month, $3,168 at a $48 loaded rate on the worked example this site publishes. A plan without this number has not been checked against reality and will be deferred rather than worked.
A review date and what will be reviewed
Annually, against findings: which checks never found anything, which faults appeared between checks, which assets generated repeat jobs. Writing the review into the plan is what turns borrowed intervals into your own, and it is the clause almost every plan omits.
Questions people ask about preventative maintenance plan
How long should the plan be?
A few pages plus the register. If it runs to forty, it is a task-list dump rather than a plan, and nobody will read it when it matters.
Who signs it off?
Whoever owns the budget it implies, because the load in hours is a resourcing commitment. Sign-off without that number is meaningless.
What if we cannot staff the plan?
Cut by criticality and record what you cut. A plan reduced deliberately is defensible; a plan quietly deferred is the state most sites are in and cannot explain.