Question 1

What is the difference between reactive and preventive maintenance?

Accepted Answer

Reactive maintenance fixes an asset after it fails or a fault is reported, while preventive maintenance inspects and services assets on a schedule to stop failures happening. Reactive work is unplanned and often urgent, so it tends to cost more in downtime and emergency call-outs. Preventive work is planned and steadier, trading a known regular cost for fewer surprise failures. Almost every site runs a mix of both, and the useful measure is the ratio between them: a site dominated by reactive work is usually one where preventive maintenance is being skipped or where assets are ageing, and shifting the balance toward planned work is what reduces cost and disruption over time.

Question 2

Is reactive maintenance always a bad thing?

Accepted Answer

No. For some assets, running to failure is the right economic choice, particularly low-cost, non-critical items where preventing failure would cost more than simply replacing them when they break. A cheap light fitting is a common example. The problem is not reactive work itself but reactive work dominating assets that matter, where failures are expensive, disruptive, or unsafe. A mature programme deliberately decides which assets sit on a preventive schedule and which are acceptable to run to failure, based on criticality and cost. Tracking reactive work is what makes that decision informed, because it shows which run-to-failure choices are quietly costing more than a planned approach would.

Question 3

Why track reactive maintenance if it is unplanned?

Accepted Answer

Because the pattern of unplanned work is one of the clearest signals of an asset's health and a site's maintenance strategy. Each reactive repair, logged against its asset, builds a failure history that reveals which items are becoming unreliable and which sites carry the heaviest breakdown load. Over time this data supports decisions to replace an ageing asset, add it to a preventive schedule, or investigate a root cause. Untracked reactive work leaves managers blind to all of this, reacting to each failure in isolation with no way to see that the same unit has broken repeatedly or that a site's reactive costs are climbing steadily.

Question 4

How do you reduce reactive maintenance over time?

Accepted Answer

By shifting critical assets onto planned inspection and preventive schedules, and by acting on the failure data reactive work produces. When an asset shows up repeatedly in reactive repairs, the options are to add it to a preventive programme, investigate the root cause, or plan its replacement. Preventive checks then catch early signs of decline before they become breakdowns. The measure of progress is the reactive-to-preventive ratio falling per site over time. This does not mean eliminating reactive work entirely, which is neither possible nor economic, but reducing the share of it on assets where failures are costly or disruptive, which is where planned maintenance pays back the most.

Question 5

How does inspection software help with reactive maintenance?

Accepted Answer

It captures reactive repairs the same way as planned inspections, so both live in one system against the same assets. A reported fault becomes a work order with an owner, due date, and evidence, tracked to verified closure rather than left as a note. Each event adds to the asset's history, and recurring-failure detection surfaces the assets generating the most unplanned work. Most importantly, because planned and reactive tasks share one dashboard, managers see the real balance between them per site, which is the number that justifies investing in preventive maintenance. Inspectly360 records reactive work as work orders and trends it against planned activity for exactly this reason.

What Is Reactive Maintenance? Facilities Management Definition and How Teams Use It