Preventive Maintenance Checklist
A task library, not a job sheet. Work through the systems in your building, adopt the tasks that apply, give each one a frequency and an owner, and you have the basis of a program rather than a list somebody copied.
- Seventy tasks across six systems, each adopted or skipped deliberately
- Nothing is adopted without an owner and a frequency
- Coverage scored per system: covered, partial or not covered
- An hours check that tells you if the program is deliverable
Preventive Maintenance Checklist
A library to choose from
| # | HVAC task | Adopt | Freq | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Replace or clean air filters, record size and quantity | |||
| 2 | Inspect and clean evaporator and condenser coils | |||
| 3 | Record amp draw against nameplate full load |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this preventive maintenance checklist is for
This document is compiled once by one person and then lived with by everybody, which is why the owner column matters more than the task column.
Whoever compiles the library
Usually a maintenance planner or FM lead. Your work is section 1 and the adopt column: what systems exist here, who maintains them, and which intervals are set by law rather than by you.
The technician who inherits it
You are the owner name in the column. What matters is that the frequency is realistic and the task is specific enough to do, rather than a line copied from a generic list.
Facilities or operations manager
You are signing up to the hours. Section 10 turns the adopted list into an annual hours figure against your actual capacity, which is the only honest test of whether the program is real.
Compliance lead
The statutory tasks are yours. Water temperatures, fire dampers and emergency lighting have intervals set elsewhere, and the known gaps register is where an unresourced one gets recorded rather than forgotten.
Which section matters the most in your sector
The task library is mostly the same across building types. What changes is which system carries the risk and which intervals you are not allowed to choose. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- FM service providers
The owner column. When maintenance is split between in-house and contracted, a task with no named owner falls into the gap between the two and stays there.
FM service provider software - Healthcare
Water system tasks. Sentinel temperatures, flushing records and mixing valve tests are the entries an inspector asks for first, and they cannot be reconstructed afterwards.
Healthcare maintenance software - Commercial real estate
Coverage by system. Across a portfolio the useful number is not how many tasks you adopted, it is how many buildings have a system nobody has assessed at all.
Portfolio maintenance software - Data centres
Electrical and standby power. Thermographic surveys, UPS battery tests and transfer switch exercising carry the risk, and their intervals are argued about rather than assumed.
Data centre maintenance software - Retail and malls
The hours check. Multi-site estates adopt a library centrally and discover the hours only exist at head office, which is what section 10 is for.
Retail maintenance software - Education
Fabric and grounds. Campus estates carry more external fabric per square meter than most, and roof, paving and drainage tasks are the ones that get dropped first when hours are short.
Campus maintenance software
What a preventive maintenance checklist should contain
A preventive maintenance checklist is a library of recurring maintenance tasks organized by building system, from which you adopt the ones that apply to your site. Each adopted task carries a frequency, an owner and a reference, and the document scores how much of each system is covered and whether the hours to deliver it exist.
A. Fields specific to a preventive maintenance checklist
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Asset register reference | What this library is being applied to | If there is no asset register, that is the first job rather than this one. A task library with nothing to attach itself to produces a schedule against assets nobody has counted. |
| Who maintains what | In-house, contracted or mixed, noted per system | The split decides who the owner column can name. A system marked mixed with no detail is where tasks fall between the contract and the in-house team. |
| Statutory intervals | The ones set by law rather than by you | Established before anything else, because they are not a judgment call. Setting a convenient interval on a statutory task is the one error the rest of the document cannot absorb. |
| The Adopt column | A deliberate yes or no on every task | The whole design rests on this being a decision. A library adopted wholesale becomes a schedule nobody can resource, and an unresourced schedule fails quietly rather than loudly. |
| Frequency and owner | Required on anything adopted | Two fields that turn a task into work. A task adopted without either is an intention, and intentions do not appear on anybody's week. |
| HVAC tasks | Fifteen, from filters and coils to static pressure and BMS verification | The largest group because it carries the most failure modes. Verifying BMS points against local instruments is the one most often skipped and the one that invalidates the rest. |
| Electrical tasks | Twelve, including thermography, RCD testing and transfer switches | Several are about proving standby power works. A generator that runs monthly but has never been tested on load is a generator nobody has actually proved. |
| Water system tasks | Twelve, covering temperatures, flushing, tanks and mixing valves | The compliance-heavy group. Sentinel temperatures and flushing records are the first thing asked for and the one set that cannot be produced retrospectively. |
| Fire and life safety tasks | Twelve, from call point tests to fire damper drop tests | Mostly on intervals you do not control. Fire dampers are the usual gap, because the drop test needs access panels that were never installed. |
| Coverage by system | Eight systems, each covered, partial or not covered | Scored rather than ticked. Not covered is an honest answer and a more useful one than a tick nobody can evidence, because it appears in the summary. |
| The hours check | Hours to deliver against hours available, and the shortfall | This is the reality test. A positive shortfall means the schedule cannot be delivered as adopted, and knowing that in planning is worth more than discovering it in March. |
| Known gaps register | What is not being done, why, the risk and a date | Where an unresourced task goes instead of quietly disappearing. A gap with a risk rating and a date is a decision; a gap nobody wrote down is an accident waiting to be explained. |
The Adopt column and the hours check are the same idea at two scales, and together they are the whole point of the document. Every task in this library looks reasonable in isolation, which is exactly why libraries get adopted wholesale: nobody wants to be the person who declined to check the fire dampers. The consequence arrives later and somewhere else, as a schedule with more hours in it than the team has, which then fails in the least useful way possible, quietly and unevenly, with whichever tasks happened to be inconvenient that month dropping out first. Working the hours check turns that from a judgment into arithmetic. If the number is short you have two honest options, cut the list or add the resource, and both are better than a full library, a proud schedule and a compliance figure that starts slipping in the spring.
B. What it looks like filled in
The coverage summary from one mid-sized office building, part way through compiling the library. Six systems assessed, and the two honest answers are worth more than the four confident ones.
| System | Tasks adopted | Owner | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| HVAC and ventilation | 12 of 15 | In-house | Covered |
| Electrical and power | 9 of 12 | Contracted | Covered |
| Plumbing, water and drainage | 12 of 12 | Mixed | Covered |
| Fire and life safety | 10 of 12 | Contracted | Partial |
| Building fabric and exterior | 4 of 10 | In-house | Partial |
| Conveyance and access | 0 | Nobody | Not covered |
The bottom row is the one that earns the document its place. Conveyance shows zero tasks and no owner, which usually means the lift contract was assumed to cover it and nobody has read the contract. That is now written down with a status, so it reaches the known gaps register with a risk and a date instead of being discovered during an entrapment. Fire and life safety at partial is the other useful entry: ten of twelve adopted, and the two missing are the fire damper drop tests, held up by access panels that were never installed. Recording that as partial rather than covered is what keeps it visible. Read the right-hand column on its own and this building is two thirds of the way to a real program, which is a far more useful position than six rows of covered nobody could evidence.
Word to edit the task library for your own systems and asset types, Excel for the coverage scoring, the hours check that calculates the shortfall and the Task Register tab that holds the adopted list as a flat file you can load into a CMMS, PDF for the copy you walk the building with. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you build a preventive maintenance checklist?
Work section 1 before touching the task lists, because it decides how much of them applies. Then adopt, score, and check the hours before you commit. Six steps.
Establish what you have and who maintains it
Site, the asset register this applies to, which systems are actually present, and whether each is maintained in-house, under contract or a mix of both. Then whether manufacturer intervals are available and where they are held.
Find the statutory intervals first
Some intervals are set by law or insurance and are not yours to choose. Establish those before you set anything else, because a convenient interval on a statutory task is the one mistake the rest of this document cannot absorb.
Work the six task groups and adopt deliberately
Fifteen HVAC tasks, twelve electrical, twelve water, twelve fire and life safety, ten fabric and nine remaining. Skip whole sections for systems you do not have. Tick Adopt only where you can name a frequency and an owner in the same row.
Score coverage per system, honestly
Eight systems marked covered, partial or not covered, spelled exactly that way so the summary counts them. Partial and not covered are real answers. A tick you could not evidence to somebody else is worth less than an honest gap.
Run the hours check before you commit
Total the tasks adopted, estimate the hours per year to deliver them, and set that against the hours you actually have. If the shortfall is positive the program is not deliverable as adopted, and now is the moment to cut the list or fund the difference.
Record the gaps, then hand it to the schedule
Anything not being done goes in the gaps register with the reason, a risk rating, an action and a date. Then sign it off and move the adopted tasks into the preventive maintenance schedule, which is where the months get set.
A task library versus the schedule you build from it
These two are often treated as one document, and keeping them apart is what makes either useful. One decides what you do; the other decides when.
| Aspect | This task library | The schedule built from it |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | What should be maintained here, and by whom | Which month does each of those tasks fall in |
| How often it changes | Rarely, when systems or contracts change | Every year, and adjusted through the year |
| What a row is | A task type with a frequency and an owner | One task against one asset in one month |
| The number it produces | Coverage per system, and hours needed per year | Hours per month, and where the peaks are |
| What it cannot tell you | Whether August is triple-booked | Whether you are missing a system entirely |
| Built in the wrong order | Fine on its own | A calendar of tasks nobody chose deliberately |
Build the library first, every time. A schedule built before the task list exists is a calendar of whatever somebody remembered, and its gaps are invisible precisely because a full-looking calendar reads as a complete program. The library makes the omissions visible while they are still cheap: a system with no tasks and no owner shows up as a row marked not covered rather than as an absence nobody notices. The handoff between the two is also the moment the hours check pays off. The library produces an annual hours figure; the schedule spreads those hours across twelve months and shows you the peaks. If the annual figure was already beyond your capacity, the schedule cannot fix it, it can only decide which months the shortfall lands in. That is why the last step here is a resourcing decision rather than a signature.
When the template starts to feel limiting
A library on paper is the right way to start and the wrong way to run. It struggles in four places, all of them once the tasks start being done.
Frequencies that do not fall due on their own
Every adopted task has a frequency written beside it in a document. Nothing turns quarterly into a date, so the first month is delivered well and the drift starts somewhere around the third.
Adopted is not the same as done
The library records what you intended to maintain. Whether any of it happened lives somewhere else entirely, which is why coverage can read well while compliance quietly does not.
The task list and the assets live apart
A row here says air handling unit. Your building has seven of them, each with its own history, and only a person can hold those two facts together.
The hours check ages the moment you finish it
It is a snapshot taken during compilation. Contracts change, assets are added and people leave, and nothing recalculates the shortfall until somebody opens the file again.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The template is the paper version of this library. The tasks are the same ones; the difference is that an adopted task becomes a scheduled job against a specific asset, with a completion history behind it.
Work Completion Validator
Adopted tasks close against evidence
On paper a task is done when somebody says so. Work Completion Validator holds the completion against what was recorded, so a PM closed with no readings and no findings is caught rather than counted.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Frequencies become due dates
Each adopted task carries its interval against its asset, so quarterly means a date that arrives rather than a word in a column, and a task drifting past due surfaces in the month it happens.
Audit Report Intelligence
Coverage becomes continuous rather than annual
Because tasks sit against assets, the question of which systems are actually covered is answered from what has been done this year rather than from what was adopted last year.
Contractor Work Tracker
The in-house and contracted split stays visible
Who owns which task sits against the contract, so a system marked mixed does not become the place where work falls between the contractor's scope and the in-house team's assumptions.
Hallucination-free by design. Atom AI answers from the records in your tenant rather than generating plausible text, so an empty field reads as empty rather than filled in for you.
Frequently asked questions
What is a preventive maintenance checklist?
A preventive maintenance checklist is a library of recurring maintenance tasks, organized by building system, that you adopt from rather than complete. This one holds seventy tasks across HVAC, electrical, water, fire and life safety, building fabric, and the remaining systems such as lifts, generators and grounds.
Each task you adopt gets a frequency, an owner and a reference. The document then scores how much of each system is covered, and checks whether the hours to deliver the adopted list actually exist before you build a schedule from it.
What should be on a preventive maintenance checklist?
Start with what is present: the site, the asset register it applies to, which systems exist, who maintains each one, and which intervals are set by statute rather than by you. Then work the six task groups and adopt the ones that apply.
Fifteen HVAC tasks covering filters, coils, refrigerant, belts, amp draw, controls and BMS verification. Twelve electrical including thermography, RCD tests, generator load tests and transfer switches. Twelve on water. Twelve on fire and life safety. Ten on fabric and exterior. Nine on lifts, generators, grounds and winter readiness. Then coverage scoring, the hours check, and a gaps register.
How often should preventive maintenance tasks be done?
It depends on the task, and three things decide it: any statutory or insurance interval, which always wins, the manufacturer's recommendation, and your own failure history for that asset. The template asks you to record which of those applied.
Resist copying frequencies from a generic list. An interval that is too short wastes hours you have already established you do not have spare, and one that is too long is only discovered through a failure. If a task never finds anything wrong, that is evidence the interval is too short rather than that the task is working.
Should I adopt every task in the library?
No, and this is the mistake the document is designed to prevent. It is a library to choose from, not a list to complete. Skip whole sections for systems you do not have, and adopt individual tasks only where you can name both a frequency and an owner.
A library adopted wholesale produces a schedule nobody can resource, and an unresourced schedule does not fail cleanly. It fails quietly and unevenly, with whichever tasks were inconvenient that month dropping out first, which is usually not the same as the least important ones.
What is the difference between a preventive maintenance checklist and a schedule?
The checklist is the library: what should be maintained here, how often, and by whom. It changes rarely, when systems or contracts change. The schedule takes those adopted tasks and places them in months, one row per task per asset, and it changes every year.
Build the library first. A schedule built before the task list exists is a calendar of whatever somebody remembered, and a full-looking calendar reads as a complete program even when a whole system is missing from it.
What do I do if I do not have the hours?
Find out before you build the schedule, not after. Section 10 totals the tasks adopted, the estimated hours to deliver them per year, and the hours you actually have, and it calculates the shortfall.
If that figure is positive there are two honest responses: reduce the adopted list, or add the resource. Both are better than proceeding, because the alternative is a schedule that starts slipping in the spring and a compliance figure that nobody can explain. Whatever you decide not to do goes into the known gaps register with a risk and a date.
Why record something as not covered?
Because the alternative is a tick you cannot evidence. Not covered is an honest status, and unlike a false tick it appears in the coverage summary, reaches the gaps register, and gets a risk rating and a date attached to it.
It is also usually more informative than the covered rows. A system with no tasks and no owner almost always means responsibility was assumed to sit with a contract nobody has read, and that is worth knowing before something fails rather than afterwards.
Can I edit and rebrand this template?
Yes. It is free to use, edit, rename and put your own logo on, internally or for clients. No attribution required.
The Word version is the one to edit if you want to add task groups for equipment types this library does not cover. The Excel version is the one to use if you want the coverage scoring and hours shortfall to calculate themselves, plus the Task Register tab, which holds the adopted tasks as a flat list with IDs, intervals and due dates ready to load into a CMMS.
In one paragraph
A preventive maintenance checklist is a library you choose from, not a list you complete, and treating it the other way round is the failure it exists to prevent. Establish what systems you actually have and who maintains each one, then find the statutory intervals, because those are not yours to set. Work the six task groups and adopt a task only where you can name a frequency and an owner in the same row. Score each system covered, partial or not covered, and use the honest answers, since a system showing no tasks and no owner usually means a contract nobody has read. Then run the hours check before committing to anything: if the hours needed exceed the hours you have, cut the list or fund the gap now, because a schedule built on a shortfall fails quietly and drops whichever tasks were awkward rather than whichever mattered least. Record what you are not doing, then hand the adopted list to the schedule.
The template is the floor, not the ceiling
Take the library; it will give you a defensible task list and an honest view of whether you can deliver it. When a spreadsheet stops telling you whether the adopted tasks are actually happening, a connected CMMS closes that gap: tasks attached to specific assets, intervals that fall due as dates, coverage measured from work completed rather than work intended, and the hours picture recalculating as contracts and assets change.
