What is corrective maintenance?
Corrective maintenance in the building industry includes all operations carried out to rectify and repair faults in systems and equipment. It aims to restore normal operation to installations affected by malfunctions. In the building context, this can involve a wide range of equipment, from heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to electrical and plumbing installations, not to mention the structures themselves.
There are three main levels of maintenance:
- Predictive maintenance, which seeks to avoid breakdowns before they occur,
- Corrective maintenance, which repairs,
- And preventive maintenance, or the programming of maintenance activities to avoid the occurrence of possible failures.
Corrective maintenance of buildings encompasses a variety of work aimed at maintaining and improving the physical and functional condition of the building's technical equipment and systems. This includes not only repair and refurbishment, but also troubleshooting installations, repairing structural components or replacing faulty equipment or bringing them up to the required level of safety standards.
Although unavoidable in some cases, corrective maintenance can lead to high costs and business interruptions. Therefore, it should ideally be integrated into a wider maintenance plan, including preventive and predictive strategies.
Corrective Maintenance and Building Management
The issue of maintenance in large buildings is particularly sensitive. Given the volume of space and the amount of equipment installed, the stakes are high. The aim is to avoid the occurrence of faults and malfunctions that can cause major disruption to occupants' activities, and even bring some of them to a standstill.
Maintenance plans for large buildings are designed with this in mind. As part of their inspection and maintenance planning, these plans include the scheduling of corrective maintenance operations: repairing weakened equipment before it breaks down is the best way of avoiding breakdowns.
In this way, a well-structured maintenance plan can contribute to significant savings.
Predictive and corrective maintenance: an effective complement
Predictive and corrective maintenance are two essential pillars of building management, complementing each other to guarantee equipment reliability and availability.
While corrective maintenance intervenes to resolve problems that have already been identified, predictive maintenance anticipates potential failures by analysing data in real-time.
By combining these two approaches, building managers can optimise their maintenance operations, reducing unplanned downtime through planned and targeted interventions.
The seamless integration of predictive and corrective maintenance helps to keep buildings running smoothly while minimising corrective maintenance operations and hence unforeseen expenses.