Planned preventative maintenance (PPM) contractors aren’t on the contact list for all business owners or site managers. But they should be. In this post, we’ll explore what planned preventative maintenance means and why it’s vital to have a trusted PPM contractor on your side.
PPM isn’t a service as such, but an approach or strategy to maintenance for your site. It means being proactive by scheduling maintenance work before it’s urgently required. In other words, while everything is still working fine and running smoothly with no signs of disfunction.
By doing so on a regular basis, you’ll prevent problems from occurring – rather than waiting for them and responding. That’s the “preventative” part. This approach is beneficial for a number of reasons, including:
A PPM contractor can deliver all the benefits above by providing vital maintenance services. That could be the likes of EICR and PAT testing every few years or work on your emergency lighting or fire alarms once or twice a year.
But it has to be a company or contractor you trust. When you’re opting for PPM, it’s not a case of spotting an issue and getting it rectified. You’ll be trusting a qualified contractor to tell you when work needs doing, before the problems occur.
Naturally, many businesses will be wary of this approach. We’ve all come across those disreputable contractors who string customers along with unnecessary work, shoddy jobs and misleading advice.
Here’s how to find a PPM contractor you can rely on…
The first thing to look for are accreditations. These are essentially approvals by industry authorities that a contractor is safe, trusted and good at what they do – depending on the accreditation in question.
For electrical maintenance, some names to look out for are:
To be extra-cautious, don’t just take a contractor’s word for it. Most accreditation bodies have their own site where you can search for PPM contractors.
When you’re trusting a contractor’s judgement for PPM, you want them to have plenty of experience under their belt. Look for PPM contractors with at least 5-10 years of experience that’s relevant to what you need – such as maintaining electrical installations. Ideally, they should also have experience working with companies or on premises that are similar to yours.
This level of experience will also show that they’re worth their salt, given how hard it would be for a dodgy contractor to stick around for several years!
Last but not least, check their reviews on Google, Trustpilot, Facebook and so on. After all, who better to ask about a PPM contractor than customers just like yourself? You’ll get insight into the quality of their work, customer service, and their overall reliability.
Many business owners or site managers reading this will be thinking the same thing:
“Can’t I hire staff to deal with this internally?”
Indeed, you can. Or at least you can try. There are several challenges to in-house PPM that contractors help you overcome…
Firstly, hiring is incredibly difficult for skilled jobs like PPM. The average cost to fill a vacancy is in excess of £6,000. You might need to do that for multiple candidates to get the breadth of skills necessary for PPM.
But that’s not all. When you want someone to join your company, you’re asking them to choose you over all their other options – which could be numerous for in-demand trades like electrical maintenance. On the flipside, a PPM contractor will actively want to work with businesses like yours.
The average UK worker changes jobs every five years. That could be more frequent for high-demand roles. Unfortunately, it puts you back at square one in terms of recruitment. But it can also cause disruption to your maintenance schedule if it takes longer to replace them than their notice period.
Another challenge of internal PPM is determining whether it’s worthy of a full-time role. PPM demand can fluctuate from day to day, week to week and month to month. As such, you may find your PPM staff in need of other responsibilities to fill their time. The result is paying the wage of a highly skilled employee only to have them fulfil menial duties.
Alternatively, you can try to hire someone part-time. That will narrow the search and make it harder to find the right candidate. It also means you’re ill-equipped for busy periods. A PPM contractor can adapt to your changing requirements, so you’re never paying for more than you need, but also never short on staff.
However things pan out with internal hires, one thing’s for sure – you’ll need to manage them. There’s no guarantee that they’ll get jobs done on time, work to the right standards and cover everything you need to keep your site safe and compliant. Ultimately, it’s still you who’s responsible for planned preventative maintenance.
That’s the key difference with a PPM contractor. We can take everything off your plate and truly take care of it with a bespoke package based on your exact requirements.
As a fully qualified team of experienced electrical contractors in Leeds, Volta Compliance provides PPM services for businesses across Yorkshire. Put simply, we can help you take a proactive approach to electrical maintenance that saves you money, reduces disruption, and keeps you safe and compliant.
Sound good? Email [email protected] or call 0113 436 0402 to arrange a quote.
