Preventive maintenance that is on a schedule, not left to memory

What preventive maintenance means here

Preventive maintenance is planned work done before equipment fails. Examples are changing the AHU filter before airflow drops, checking the chiller before a heatwave and testing fire doors before an inspection. In TaskLoop, each of those checks is a task: one owner, a deadline, instructions and an optional photo when it is done.

The hard part of preventive maintenance is not knowing what to check. It is making sure the check actually happens week after week, when the same technicians are also dealing with breakdowns and resident complaints. A paper log on the plant-room door shows what someone wrote down. It does not show what was skipped.

The workflow, step by step

1. Set up the schedule of routine checks

The chief engineer or facility manager sets up the routine work for the building. This usually means AHU filter changes, chiller and cooling-tower checks, pump-room walk-throughs, fire-door and emergency-lighting tests, water-tank inspections and lift lobby checks. Manufacturers’ manuals and local codes set the intervals. Our schedule template for residential towers is a useful starting point.

2. TaskLoop creates each task on time

Each check is scheduled on the admin dashboard and assigned to a technician or to the maintenance department, with a deadline, instructions such as “record suction and discharge pressure” or “photo of the filter label”, and a checklist where needed. TaskLoop then creates the next task in the series automatically, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually.

3. The technician does the check

The technician sees the task on the staff app, accepts it, does the check and marks it complete. A photo of the gauge, the new filter or the signed tag goes with it. TaskLoop records who did it and when.

4. Review what is done and what is late

The dashboard shows completed checks and open ones. If a check is not done by its deadline, it escalates to a supervisor, so a skipped filter change becomes visible within days rather than at the next breakdown.

Who uses it

• Chief engineer / facility manager. Owns the list of checks, assigns them and handles escalations.
• Maintenance technician. Receives, completes and photographs the checks on a phone.
• Building manager / community manager. Looks at the reports to see whether planned work is being done.
• Owner or auditor. Gets timestamped records with photos instead of a signed paper sheet.

What the screen shows

On the dashboard, preventive tasks appear in the same live list as reactive work orders. Each one shows its owner, deadline and status, and department workload shows whether maintenance has time for planned work this week. On the staff app the technician sees a short list: “Tower B, AHU-3, replace filter, due Thursday”, with buttons to accept and complete and an option to add a photo.

Preventive and corrective work together

Planned checks and breakdown jobs go to the same technicians, so they belong in the same queue. When both sit on one dashboard, the chief engineer can see when reactive jobs are pushing planned work aside. That is often the earliest sign that a building needs more maintenance hours or a different shift pattern.

Getting started with schedules

Start with the checks that slip most often, usually filters, fire doors and emergency lighting. Set each one up as a schedule with an owner, a deadline and a short checklist, and let TaskLoop generate the tasks. After a month, the reports show which schedules run on time and which need a different owner or interval.

Contractor checks

Outside service contractors can be assigned scheduled checks, such as the quarterly lift service or the annual fire system test, and close them with photo proof in the same record as your own team’s work.

What it doesn’t do

• Sensor triggers. TaskLoop does not read data from your BMS. It does not open a task because a sensor reading crossed a limit.
• Asset registers and spare parts. TaskLoop tracks the check and who did it. It does not track the full asset hierarchy or stock levels the way a dedicated CMMS does.