Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) in Civic.ly

Planned preventative maintenance (PPM) is the practice of servicing and testing your equipment on a fixed schedule — rather than waiting for it to fail — so that statutory, insurance, and manufacturer requirements are met before they become a problem. If you're asking whether Civic.ly "does PPM": yes, but not as a separate feature. PPM is exactly what a recurring task on an asset already gives you, set to whatever interval your statutory or manufacturer schedule requires. This article explains how the pieces you already have map onto a PPM programme, and links out to the checklists for each domain.

What PPM looks like in Civic.ly

There's no dedicated "PPM" object to configure. Instead:

1. Add the asset — the boiler, the lift, the vehicle, the fire extinguisher.
2. Create a recurring task at the required interval — annually, every five years, whatever the item demands. See How to Create a Routine for the mechanics of setting a recurrence.
3. Whoever it's assigned to sees it appear in their task list when it's due — often that's you, prompting you to book a contractor, rather than someone completing it themselves on the spot.
4. The completed record — date, certificate photo, contractor name, notes — becomes your evidence trail, sitting on the asset's Tasks tab alongside every other check that asset has ever had.

Because it's just a scheduled task, PPM items live in exactly the same system as your weekly and monthly checklists — there's nothing extra to learn.

Routine checks vs PPM — what's the difference?

Both are recurring tasks in Civic.ly, but they sit at different points on the same ladder:

• Routine checks (weekly/monthly) are usually done by your own team with a checklist — a visual or functional look at condition, raising a defect if something's wrong. These are Inspections.
• PPM items (annual, or multi-year) are usually statutory or manufacturer-driven, often carried out by an external contractor — an EICR, a Gas Safe check, a LOLER lift examination. These are often better modelled as Jobs (the contractor visit is the work item), with the certificate attached as a photo or document on completion. If your own team completes a formal annual inspection in-house (like a RoSPA-style play inspection some councils do internally), an Inspection with a checklist works just as well.

Either way, the scheduling and evidence model is identical — pick the task type that matches who's actually doing the work.

The statutory PPM items by domain

• Buildings: EICR (typically five-yearly for non-domestic premises), fire risk assessment and its periodic review, PAT testing, boiler and gas appliance servicing (annual Gas Safe check), LOLER thorough examination on any lift or hoist, periodic lightning protection system testing, legionella risk assessment review. See How to Inspect Buildings for the full regime, including the routine checks that sit alongside these.
• Vehicles and plant: MOT and vehicle tax renewal, annual compliance checks, manufacturer-recommended servicing intervals. See How to Inspect Vehicles and Machinery.
• Play equipment: the annual independent inspection (commonly RoSPA) that sits above your weekly/monthly routine checks. See How to Inspect Parks and Playgrounds.
• Any other equipment: whatever the manufacturer's handbook or your insurer's policy wording specifies — the same add-asset, schedule-a-recurring-task pattern applies regardless of what the item is.

Evidence for auditors and insurers

There's no compliance dashboard yet, so the working model is: schedule everything, and treat overdue as your non-compliance signal. If a PPM item isn't in Civic.ly as a recurring task, nothing will tell you it's coming due. Once it is:

• The asset's Tasks tab shows its complete PPM and inspection history in one place, dated and evidenced.
• A completed task carries whatever you attach to it — a certificate photo, contractor invoice, notes — so the record an assessor asks for is already sitting where the work happened.
• You can give an assessor or auditor a direct link to a record, or their own scoped login, rather than emailing documents around.

Common questions

Q: Does Civic.ly have a dedicated PPM module or calendar? A: No — there's no separate PPM feature to switch on. It's a recurring task against an asset, the same mechanism used for routine checklists, just set to a longer interval and usually assigned as a Job rather than an Inspection.

Q: Should a PPM item be a Job or an Inspection? A: If an external contractor is doing the work (an EICR, a gas safety check), model it as a Job — the visit is the work item, and the certificate is the completion evidence. If your own team is completing a formal checklist-based assessment in-house, an Inspection works just as well.

Q: What happens if we miss a PPM date? A: There's no automatic escalation yet — a missed item just shows as overdue in the task list. Build a habit of reviewing overdue tasks regularly (a monthly clerk review of the task list is common), since that overdue flag is currently your only warning signal.

Q: Can several assets share one PPM task, like a whole building's PAT testing in one visit? A: Yes — log it against whichever asset makes sense as the primary record (the building, or one representative appliance) and note in the task description which items the contractor covered. Very granular per-appliance PPM is usually only worth the setup effort for a small number of high-value or high-risk items.