A preventive maintenance service is a contractor doing your scheduled work, and it is a perfectly reasonable arrangement for plant your own team is not equipped for: lifts, chillers, fire systems, specialist rotating equipment. The decision usually gets made on price per visit, which is the least important variable. What matters more is which parts of the function you are handing over and, in particular, who ends up holding the history, because the history is the thing that is worth most and is easiest to lose. This page is about deciding well.
Contract the skill, keep the register
A service contract buys competent hands and specialist equipment. It should never buy the list of what you own or the record of what has been done to it. Both are yours, both outlive the contract, and a contractor's system leaves when the contractor does.
Insist on findings, not just certificates
Most contracts deliver a completion certificate, which proves attendance. What you need is what was found: wear noted, readings taken, parts approaching end of life. Ask for it in the contract and give them somewhere to put it, because a contractor will not invent a records process for you.
Know what the visit actually includes
'Annual service' means different work to different suppliers, and the gap usually shows up as an extra quote. Specify the task list rather than the frequency, and specify what happens when something is found: fix on the visit up to a value, or quote and return.
Price it against doing it yourself, in hours
On the worked example this site publishes, in-house PM runs at 66 technician hours a month, $3,168 at a $48 loaded rate. That is the number a contract price should be compared against, including the travel and the waiting your own team would have absorbed.
Questions people ask about preventive maintenance service
Should statutory inspections be contracted?
Usually yes, because competence is defined externally and the paperwork is specific. Keep the certificates in your own records rather than only in the contractor's portal.
What happens to the history when we change supplier?
Whatever your contract says, which is usually nothing. This is the single clause worth adding: findings and readings are provided to you in a readable format, monthly.
Can we contract some assets and not others?
That is the normal shape. Specialist plant contracted, general plant in house, with one register covering both so nobody has to ask which system an asset is in.