Maintenance Costs

Maintenance costs include costs of maintenance personnel, plant and equipment, spares required during emergency (unplanned) breakdown, schedulable corrective/predictive planned maintenance or the intermittent maintenance for major mid-life refurbishment, alterations etc.

Depending on the type of maintenance regime adopted it is recognized that generally increasing the level of one type of maintenance has the effect of decreasing the need for other types of maintenance. For example, an asset that is regularly maintained would have less frequency of breakdown and hence less emergency maintenance would be required. In some cases the optimal cost will be the reverse practice, eg. let it fail and repair it.

The standard of service required for an asset can have a dramatic influence on the maintenance costs. For example, maintenance on major collector roads can cause great inconvenience and expense to customers if not programmed sensitively.

The objective of effective maintenance management is, therefore, to have an optimal maintenance regime where the overall maintenance costs would be minimum while providing the required level of service or output, eg certain reliability or availability.

This requires an appropriate blend of:

• Capital investment (refurbishment)
• Planned maintenance
• Unplanned maintenance.