What’s the difference?

Condition monitoring and preventive maintenance both play key roles in modern asset management, both have a similar function, but a distinctly different. Understanding the distinction is important for asset and property managers trying to improve reliability while controlling maintenance budgets. 

Preventive Maintenance: Time-Based Approach

Preventive maintenance follows a scheduled plan - quarterly inspections and/or annual servicing - regardless of the asset’s actual condition. It’s goal aims to reduce critical failure risk by performing maintenance at regular intervals.

While preventive maintenance can be an effective model, it has two primary limitations:

• It misses issues that occur in between scheduled inspections.
• It can result in unnecessary maintenance on assets that are still performing well.

Put simply, preventive maintenance is reliable but not always efficient.

Condition Monitoring: Data-Based Approach

Condition monitoring tracks asset performance continuously or at frequent intervals. This may include:

• Structural inspections and photographic data
• Digital twins and intelligent analytics (3D modelling of assets)
• Temperature, vibration, and moisture
• Environmental and operational performance metrics

Instead of guessing when maintenance is needed, asset, property and facilities managers can use actual asset data and insights to determine the right maintenance solution at the right time.

Key Differences Between the Two Approaches

How They Work Together

Preventive maintenance still has value - especially for regulatory requirements or components with predictable degradation patterns. Condition monitoring enhances this by filling the gaps and eliminating blind spots.

Combined, the two approaches create a powerful strategy to maintain the health and performance of an asset:

• Routine tasks are completed on schedule.
• Performance-driven insights inform maintenance prioritisation and risk mitigation.
• Unexpected failures are drastically reduced.

The Shift Toward Proactive Maintenance

Condition monitoring enables proactive maintenance - a model where analytics forecast likely failures before they occur. AI and platforms like Asseti bring together inspection data, performance metrics, component lifecycle data and portfolio insights to predict maintenance needs with accuracy.

In summary:

Preventive maintenance keeps assets compliant and on track. Condition monitoring keeps assets optimised for performance. Together, they create a modern, resilient maintenance strategy that maximises asset life and reduces unnecessary cost.