Service Interruption Notice Template
The notice you send before switching something off. What stops, what keeps working, what has been arranged instead and who to call while it is down, written so that an occupant who reads it once has no reason to ring and ask. Sections one to eight are the notice itself. The rest is yours.
- What will keep working, the line most notices leave out
- Exact floors and units, because the building means everyone
- Fire cover named in the notice where detection is isolated
- Sections 1 to 8 are what you send, 9 and 10 are office use
Service Interruption Notice
What stops, and what does not
| # | ARRANGEMENTS WE HAVE MADE | IN PLACE | OWNER | CONFIRMED |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alternative or temporary supply arranged | |||
| 2 | Fire watch or alternative cover where detection is isolated | |||
| 3 | Occupants with additional needs contacted individually |
The document you will get. Download for the full, editable file.
Who this service interruption notice is for
One notice, and three audiences who read it for completely different reasons.
The occupant or tenant
Sections 5 and 7. What stops, what keeps working and what they need to do before and after. If both of those are answered properly they never need to contact anybody, which is the entire purpose of sending it.
The facilities or building manager
Sections 2 and 3, and the ten arrangements in section 6. Naming the exact floors and units is what keeps the phone quiet, and the arrangements are what turns a notice into a plan.
Whoever owns life safety
The fire cover line. Where detection or suppression is isolated, what is in place instead belongs in the notice rather than in a file, and it needs an owner and a confirmation.
Reception and the helpdesk
The contact section and the distribution record. They take the calls this notice did not prevent, and they need the same version of events that went to the building.
Where an interruption costs the most
The structure suits any occupied building. What changes is how much notice the lease demands and what an hour of downtime actually costs. If you run one of these, the sector page goes further than the template does.
- Commercial real estate
Multi tenant buildings, where the lease sets a minimum notice period and giving less than it is a breach however routine the work.
Portfolio maintenance software - Retail and malls
Trading hours, where an interruption inside them is a revenue conversation rather than an inconvenience.
Retail maintenance software - Healthcare
Clinical continuity, where isolating a system needs a cover arrangement agreed clinically rather than just recorded.
Healthcare maintenance software - Corporate facilities
Occupied offices, where the volume of calls is the cost and the what keeps working line is what removes them.
Corporate facilities software - Education
Term time, where the same shutdown is trivial in August and impossible in October.
Campus maintenance software - FM service providers
Contracted delivery, where the notice is often a contractual deliverable with its own minimum period and audit trail.
FM service provider software
What a service interruption notice should contain
A service interruption notice is the advance warning sent to occupants before a service is deliberately switched off. It states which service stops, exactly which floors and units are affected, when it starts and ends, what will keep working, what cover has been arranged, what occupants need to do, and who to contact while the service is down.
A. The sections that carry the weight
| Field | What goes in it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Notice details | Reference, who issued it, the notice period given and the minimum required | Two separate fields for a reason. Recording the minimum your lease or policy demands next to what you actually gave is what turns a compliance question into an answered one. |
| Notice type | Planned, emergency, revised, cancellation or completion | Revised is the one that gets skipped. A notice that turns out to be wrong does more damage than no notice, so reissue rather than letting the original stand. |
| What is being interrupted | The service, the buildings, and the exact floors, units or areas | Be specific here or pay for it in phone calls. The building is not an answer, and it generates contacts from people on floors that were never affected. |
| When | Start, end, expected duration and whether it could over-run | The over-run field is worth completing honestly. A worst case stated up front is forgivable; one discovered at four o'clock is not. |
| Why | The reason in plain language, and what happens if it is not done now | Occupants accept a great deal when the reason is stated plainly. Statutory inspection reads very differently from unspecified maintenance. |
| What will not work | What stops, what keeps working, and the safety systems affected | The middle line is the one that matters. Every notice lists what stops; the one that says what does not is the one that prevents the calls. |
| Safety systems affected | Fire alarm, emergency lighting and sprinklers, with the cover in place | Not optional and not office use. If detection or suppression is isolated, the cover arrangement is named in the notice itself. |
| Arrangements we have made | Ten lines from temporary supply to contractor access, each with an owner | The difference between a warning and a plan. Alternative washrooms, individual contact for anyone with additional needs, and a briefed reception are the three that get noticed. |
| What you need to do | Before, during, after, and in an emergency while it is down | The emergency line is easy to leave out and is the one somebody will need. What to do if the fire alarm is isolated and something happens anyway. |
| Who to contact | During, out of hours, emergency, and where updates will be posted | Naming where updates appear is what stops the same question arriving four times through four channels. |
| Distribution | Who was told, how, by whom and when, confirmed | Office use, and the section that answers the only question that matters afterwards, which is whether a particular person was actually told. |
| After the event | Actual times, whether it over-ran, restoration tested and safety systems logged | Also office use. The safety systems restored and logged line is the one an insurer or a regulator asks about. |
The single field that changes how this document performs is what will keep working, and it is missing from almost every outage notice ever sent. The reasoning is straightforward once you have taken the calls. An occupant who reads that the water is off between eight and two has been told what stops, and now has a list of questions nobody has answered: are the washrooms on my floor affected, can I still make coffee, does this mean the toilets, what about the shower in the gym. Each of those becomes a phone call, and they all arrive in the same hour. Writing one line that says the washrooms on levels four and five are unaffected and the ground floor kitchen is working normally removes nearly all of them at the cost of a sentence. The second thing worth copying is the split between the notice and the office-use sections. Sections one to eight are written to be forwarded, printed and pinned to a noticeboard. Sections nine and ten are a distribution record and a post-event log, and they are for you. Teams that do not realize the document is in two halves either send the whole thing, which looks careless, or keep the whole thing, which means the notice never goes out at all.
B. What it looks like filled in
One planned interruption, start to finish. Seven days of notice, three hundred and ten people affected, and not a single complaint.
| Line | Value |
|---|---|
| Reference | SIN-2027-0031 |
| Service and area | Water, Levels 1-3, Northgate House |
| Reason | Statutory tank clean |
| Notice given | 7 days |
| Planned window | 05/05/2027, 08:00 to 14:00 |
| Actual duration, and complaints | 5h 40m, and none |
Three hundred and ten people lost their water supply for most of a working day and nobody complained, which is worth sitting with for a moment. The work itself was entirely routine, a statutory tank clean that has to happen whatever anyone thinks of it. What made the difference was that the notice went out seven days ahead, named levels one to three rather than the building, and told people which washrooms would still be working. The interruption then finished twenty minutes inside its window, which matters less than it sounds; had it over-run by an hour, the notice had already said that was possible and said how people would be told. Compare this with the version where the same work is announced two days ahead as water off in the building. The work is identical and the outcome is a morning of phone calls from levels four and above, several of whom made other arrangements they did not need to make, plus at least one complaint from somebody who had booked a meeting that day. The document did not change the plumbing. It changed how many people had to ask a question.
Word for the version you will actually send out and pin to a noticeboard, Excel for the one that holds a Notice Log of interruptions across the year, and PDF for the copy that goes in the file. Free, and yours to rebrand.
How do you write a planned maintenance notice to tenants?
Most of the work happens before the notice is written. Confirm the arrangements, then say what keeps working. Six steps.
Check the minimum notice you owe, then beat it
The lease, your policy or a regulation will set a minimum. Record it next to the notice period you actually gave, because the two being different is the thing somebody will ask about later.
Name the exact floors, units and areas
Not the building. A notice scoped to the whole site generates calls from everyone who was never affected, and those calls arrive at the same time as the ones from people who were.
Work out what will keep working
Go through it service by service and write down what is unaffected: which washrooms, which kitchen, which lifts. This is the line that prevents the calls, and it takes a few minutes to establish.
Arrange the cover before you send anything
Ten arrangements, each with an owner and a confirmation. If fire detection or suppression is being isolated, the cover has to be in place and it has to be named in the notice itself.
Send sections one to eight, and record who got it
The first eight sections are the notice. Log who was told, how and when in section nine, including reception, security, cleaning, contractors and anyone contacted individually.
Send a completion notice, and a revised one if anything changes
Tell people when the service is back and tested. If the plan changes, reissue rather than letting the original stand, because a stale notice is worse than none.
The notice versus the document that controls the work
The notice tells people what to expect. A different document controls the work itself, and confusing the two leaves one of the jobs undone.
| Aspect | The interruption notice | The permit or shutdown plan |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is written for | Occupants and tenants | The people doing the work |
| What it describes | The effect on the building | The task and its controls |
| When it is issued | Days ahead, by policy or lease | At the point of work |
| What it must contain | What keeps working, and who to call | Isolation, precautions and authorization |
| Who signs it | Whoever issues it on behalf of the landlord | An authorized person, and the operative |
| What it must never be | A description of the work | The thing you send to tenants |
This notice does not control the work. A permit to work does that for a single task, and a plant shutdown checklist does it for a whole system coming down and going back up. The failure mode is not usually that somebody sends the wrong document; it is that one of them never gets written. A team focused on the engineering issues a thorough permit and tells nobody in the building, so the first the occupants know is when the water stops. A team focused on communications sends an immaculate notice and lets the contractor start without an isolation certificate. Both halves have to exist, and they are aimed at different readers: the notice describes the effect and is written for people who do not care how it works, the permit describes the controls and is written for people who do. The only field they genuinely share is the window, and it is worth checking that the two documents agree on it before either one goes out.
When the template starts to feel limiting
The file is built for one building issuing notices at a manageable rate. Four things start to hurt as soon as that is not the shape of the problem.
Distribution is a list somebody typed
Section nine records who was told, and it only knows what was entered. Whether a particular tenant actually received it is a question the log cannot really answer.
Nothing counts the notice period for you
The minimum notice and the notice given sit next to each other and nothing compares them. A notice issued a day short is discovered when somebody complains about it.
Occupants cannot see live status
Once the notice is out, the only way to tell people it has over-run is to send something else. Everyone who did not see the update rings to ask.
Interruptions never add up to an argument
Counting interruptions per building per year is the case for capital investment, and on paper it is a stack of separate notices that nobody totals.
What running this in Facilio looks like
The notice does not change. What changes is that it attaches to the work that caused it and the count builds itself.
Work Order Intelligence
The notice attaches to the work
An interruption is linked to the job or shutdown that caused it, so the window on the notice and the window on the work cannot quietly drift apart.
Asset Intelligence
Interruptions read against the plant
Because each notice carries the system being isolated, repeated interruptions against one asset are visible as an asset problem rather than as a run of unrelated notices.
Audit Report Intelligence
The count becomes the business case
Interruptions per building per year assembles itself, which is the argument for replacing the thing that keeps failing and the number nobody usually has to hand.
Ops Performance Intelligence
Notice periods are checked, not remembered
The minimum required and the notice actually given are held together, so a notice going out short surfaces before it is sent rather than after somebody objects.
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 service interruption notice?
It is the advance warning sent to occupants before a service is deliberately switched off. It states which service stops, exactly which floors and units are affected, when it starts and ends, what will keep working, what cover has been arranged and who to contact while it is down.
It is the only outbound document in this set. Everything else is a record you keep; this one is written to be sent.
How much notice should you give?
Whatever your lease, policy or regulation sets as a minimum, and preferably more. The template records the minimum required and the notice actually given as two separate fields, because the gap between them is what gets questioned later.
Seven days is common for planned work in a let building. Emergency interruptions have their own notice type, because there the honest answer is that there was no notice period.
What should a planned maintenance notice to tenants include?
Which service stops, the exact floors and units affected, the window, the reason in plain language, what will keep working, what cover is in place, what occupants need to do before and after, and who to contact including out of hours.
The line most often missing is what will keep working, and it is the one that prevents the most phone calls.
Why name specific floors rather than the building?
Because the building means everyone, and everyone will contact you. A notice scoped to the whole site generates calls from people on floors that were never affected, and those arrive at the same time as the genuine ones.
Naming levels one to three costs nothing and removes every call from level four upwards.
What if fire detection is being isolated?
Then the cover arrangement belongs in the notice itself, not in an office file. A fire watch or an alternative detection arrangement, named, with somebody owning it and confirming it is in place before the isolation starts.
Occupants are entitled to know that the system protecting them is off and what is standing in for it.
What happens if the work over-runs?
The notice should already have said it could, given a worst case, and said how people would be told. That is the difference between an over-run people tolerate and one that generates complaints.
Then send a revised notice. Letting the original stand once you know it is wrong does more damage than sending nothing would have.
Which parts of the template do you actually send?
Sections one to eight. Those are the notice: details, what is interrupted, when, why, what will not work, the arrangements, what occupants need to do and who to contact.
Sections nine and ten are office use, a distribution record and a post-event log. Forwarding those to tenants is untidy, and keeping the whole document because of them means the notice never goes out.
Does this replace a permit to work?
No, and the two are not alternatives. This notice tells occupants what to expect; a permit to work controls the task itself, with isolation, precautions and authorization.
Where a whole system is coming down and going back up, a plant shutdown checklist covers the startup as well. Both halves need to exist, and they are written for different readers.
In one paragraph
A service interruption notice works when it answers the questions an occupant would otherwise ring to ask. Say what stops, but more importantly say what will keep working, because that is the line most notices omit and the one that prevents the calls. Name the exact floors and units rather than the building, put the fire cover arrangement in the notice where detection is isolated, and remember that sections one to eight are the part you send.
The notice is the communication, not the plan
Say what keeps working, name the areas exactly, and arrange the cover before anything goes out. Once nothing is checking the notice period, or the interruptions never add up into an argument for fixing what keeps failing, the document has done its part.
