Minimizing Facility Corrective Maintenance: Benchmarking Preventative-to-Corrective Maintenance Ratios Using Maintenance Data and Building Age in Dormitories

Facility managers (FM) need impartial facility performance benchmarks to manage maintenance performance best, especially as facilities age and deferred work increases. Dormitories have a particular impact on occupants' lives and, therefore, deserve judicious maintenance management. Although the key to good management, there is no clearly established benchmarks for monitoring maintenance performance in dormitories. To provide objective benchmarks, this study sought to analyze work order histories from a government database. This study employed a scripted method to visualize trends in 96,629 work orders from military dormitories across the United States and around the world between 2015 and 2020 to determine the effect of facility age on maintenance requirements and preventative maintenance (PM) to corrective maintenance (CM) ratios for five different facility systems. By calculating the maximum inflection points of the trendlines, the study determined the age of maximum CM cost and labor intensity between 21 and 25 years for most facility systems studied. The study also calculated the PM-to-CM ratios that minimized CM costs and labor for three tiers of building ages. This study contributed to the existing knowledge in maintenance benchmarking by providing a method to calculate objective costs and labor requirements for maintenance management based on historical data. Additionally, this study contributed practical values for FMs to use when monitoring maintenance performance in dormitories.