July 29, 2025
What is Preventive Maintenance? Building a Proactive Electrical Plan with PowerForce by Qmerit
4 Min. Read
Preventive maintenance, also known as proactive maintenance, cuts costs, improves safety, and enhances the occupant experience in commercial buildings.
It’s true of all building systems, but even more so when it comes to electrical ones. After all, a single power outage can result in hours of lost work, bringing your facility to a standstill.
With NFPA 70B now in effect and property owners increasingly prioritizing building safety and efficiency, preventive maintenance programs are rapidly replacing reactive approaches across the industry.
What is preventive maintenance? What should you include in your electrical maintenance plan? Read on to find the answer to these questions and more.
What Is Preventive Maintenance? How Does It Differ From Reactive Maintenance?
If you operate under a reactive maintenance model, you call for help when something breaks down. You get things fixed as quickly as possible, but not before they impact building operations and potentially revenues.
Preventive maintenance is an entirely proactive approach. You’re scheduling routine commercial electrical maintenance calls even when nothing is wrong. The purpose is to find at-risk circuits before they fail and take the necessary steps to prevent any issues.
From a financial point of view, you’re indeed paying for more frequent calls, which translates into ongoing preventive maintenance costs, but you can still save in several key areas.
First of all, preventive maintenance makes your building safer. By proactively managing your electrical failure risk, you’re preventing downtime and delivering a much better experience to your occupants.
Secondly, regular maintenance calls extend the lifespan of your electrical equipment and infrastructure. A simple task like regular cleaning can delay replacements by a few years, improving the ROI of your electrical equipment.
You’re also saving on emergency repair fees. Paying for a minor fix that a commercial electrical contractor catches early is nothing compared to covering major repairs on top of a contractor’s emergency call fee in case of equipment failure.
With NFPA 70B becoming a hard requirement in 2023, preventive maintenance is now something commercial buildings must embrace. Failing to do so puts you at risk of facing liability issues, paying compliance fines, or even losing your insurance coverage.
What Does Preventive Maintenance Look Like? Strategies and Compliance for Commercial Buildings
To comply with NFPA 70B, your Electrical Maintenance Program (EMP) should outline maintenance intervals for all your electrical systems per the standard’s recommendations.
Your preventive maintenance schedule needs to reflect the condition of the electrical equipment. For instance, fuses in good vision need a visual check once every 60 months, while older fuses require a visual inspection once a year. The NFPA 70B guidebook has several chapters dedicated to assessing condition, but you can supplement the recommended methods with your data.
You should also adjust your maintenance intervals based on usage and whether circuits are critical. For instance, a circuit powering a backup generator or an important server would need more frequent maintenance and checks than a break room.
Many commercial buildings are embracing AI and data solutions for predictive maintenance. This approach is similar to preventive maintenance but focuses on as-needed interventions rather than predetermined inspections. Adopting these innovative solutions makes sense if you are interested in the IoT and automated building operations, since all these technologies support a data-driven ecosystem for your property.
For instance, an AI-powered data solution can track power consumption and flag a circuit with a slight surge, indicating it’s time for an inspection. These solutions are valid for lengthening maintenance intervals under NFPA 70B and can make compliance much easier.
How to Create a Preventive Maintenance Plan
Your commercial building needs an Electrical Maintenance Program (EMP) to comply with NFPA 70B. The first step should be to define the scope of this plan by surveying your electrical systems. This is a good opportunity to assess their age, condition, and priority level.
Next, refer to NFPA 70B to find the corresponding maintenance intervals based on the condition and type of electrical systems you have. You’ll also need to conduct and keep electrical studies up to date.
The standard provides detailed guidance on the testing procedures to add to your preventive maintenance checklist. These include visual inspections, cleaning, lubrication, mechanical servicing, and electrical testing. You can add more checks based on your identified risks and priorities, but you must first meet all the NFPA 70B compliance requirements.
Besides keeping track of maintenance intervals and approved testing methods, your plan must include maintenance records. When did you last service the equipment? Which tests did you conduct? What were your observations, and which steps did you take to remediate any issues you found?
Under NFPA 70B, your maintenance plan must assign roles and responsibilities. You should designate a program coordinator and team members to perform routine checks and track records.
Due to the complexity of commercial electrical systems, working with a qualified electrical contractor is usually best.
Your commercial electrical maintenance plan should also have provisions for the unexpected. Outline the steps and whom to call when an electrical problem arises.
PowerForce by Qmerit™ and Your Commercial Maintenance Needs
Your electrical maintenance strategy needs to cover routine checks and emergency calls. Having a single platform with a dedicated workforce prevents delays in usual maintenance intervals and unforeseen repairs.
Simplify Your Commercial Electrical Projects with PowerForce by Qmerit™
Don’t let the complexity of managing electrical work across multiple locations or even a single site slow you down. With PowerForce by Qmerit™, you gain a trusted, single-source solution to streamline your projects, from routine maintenance to large-scale installations.
Remove the stress of finding and vetting a new electrician for each project or managing multiple contractors nationwide. Our easy-to-use platform puts the power back in your hands so you can easily navigate your projects to success.
Enjoy seamless coordination, expert oversight, and consistent quality across all your sites, ensuring your business operates efficiently and stays ahead in a rapidly evolving market.
Learn more about PowerForce by Qmerit™ and take charge today.
