Maintenance KPIs: What to Track and How to Calculate
In short
Maintenance KPIs are the measures a facility team uses to judge how well maintenance is working. The most common are PPM completion rate, the planned vs reactive ratio, MTTR, MTBF, first-time fix rate and asset uptime. Pick a small set that answers real questions, calculate them the same way every month, and act on what they show.
What a maintenance KPI is for
A KPI is not a report card. It is a question, written as a number.
“Are we keeping up with planned work?” becomes PPM completion rate. “Are breakdowns getting shorter?” becomes MTTR. If a number does not answer a question someone actually asks, it does not need to be on the report.
Most teams track too many measures and act on none of them. Five good ones, reviewed every month, beat twenty on a dashboard nobody opens.
The core maintenance KPIs
| KPI | What it answers | How to calculate |
|---|---|---|
| PPM completion rate | Are we doing the planned work on time? | PPM tasks completed on time divided by PPM tasks due, as a percentage |
| Planned vs reactive ratio | How much of our work is breakdowns? | Planned work orders (or hours) compared with reactive ones |
| MTTR (mean time to repair) | How long do repairs take? | Total repair time divided by the number of repairs |
| MTBF (mean time between failures) | How often does this asset fail? | Total running time divided by the number of failures |
| First-time fix rate | Are technicians arriving ready? | Jobs closed on the first visit divided by all jobs, as a percentage |
| Asset uptime | Is the equipment available when needed? | Time available divided by time it should have been available |
| Open work order backlog | Are we falling behind? | Number of open jobs, and how old they are |
Cost measures such as maintenance cost per asset are useful too, but only if your finance data is linked to assets. Many teams cannot do this reliably, and a wrong cost figure causes more trouble than no figure.
Worked examples
These use made-up numbers to show the arithmetic.
PPM completion rate. 180 PPM tasks were due in September. 162 were completed by their due date. 162 divided by 180 is 0.9, so the completion rate is 90%.
MTTR. Four repairs on the chilled water pumps took 2, 3, 4 and 3 hours. The total is 12 hours across 4 repairs, so MTTR is 3 hours.
MTBF. A pump ran for 3,000 hours and failed 3 times. MTBF is 1,000 hours.
First-time fix rate. Out of 120 reactive jobs, 96 were finished on the first visit. That is 80%.
Asset uptime. A chiller was needed for 720 hours last month and was out of service for 18. It was available for 702 hours, which is 97.5%.
Agree the definitions before you report anything
Most arguments about KPIs are really arguments about definitions. Write these down:
- Does MTTR start when the fault is reported, or when the technician starts work?
- Does a job completed late still count towards PPM completion, or only on-time ones?
- Do you count work orders or labour hours in the planned vs reactive ratio?
- Does a second visit for a different fault count against first-time fix?
- Which assets are in scope? Critical equipment only, or everything?
Keep the definitions in the same document as the numbers. When someone new takes over the report, the figures stay comparable.
The data you need
Every KPI above comes from a handful of fields. If these are recorded properly, the numbers build themselves:
- A unique asset ID on every job
- The date and time the job was reported, attended and completed
- Job type: planned or reactive
- Whether the job was finished on that visit
- For PPM: the due date and the completion date
If your team records these on paper or fills them in at the end of the week, fix that before worrying about which KPIs to use. Late data is the main reason maintenance reports get argued over.
Choose five, not twenty
A workable monthly set for most FM teams:
- PPM completion rate
- Planned vs reactive ratio
- First-time fix rate
- MTTR on critical assets
- Open backlog and its age
Add MTBF and uptime for the assets that matter most, such as chillers, lifts and generators. Leave the rest until someone asks for them.
If you work under an FM contract, SLA compliance sits alongside these. Our guide on how to track SLA performance covers that side in detail.
Review, then act
A monthly review works best when each number has an owner and a next step:
- What changed since last month, and why?
- Which assets are behind the change?
- What are we doing about it, and who is doing it?
If a KPI has not led to a single decision in six months, drop it.
Common mistakes
- Measuring everything and changing nothing.
- Comparing your numbers to benchmarks from other buildings. Age, use and contract terms differ too much for that to mean anything.
- Changing the definition mid-year, which makes the trend useless.
- Judging technicians on numbers they cannot control, which usually leads to creative data entry.
- Reporting one portfolio-wide figure that hides the two sites causing all the problems.
How software helps
The KPIs above need every job and its timestamps in one place. CAFM and CMMS systems collect this as work happens, rather than asking someone to reconstruct it later.
Most systems can also show the trend over time and split it by site, asset type or team, which is where the useful conversations start. Tools such as predictive maintenance and anomaly detection go a step further by flagging assets that look likely to fail, before they show up in the failure counts.
Frequently asked questions
What are the most important maintenance KPIs?
For most facility teams: PPM completion rate, the planned vs reactive ratio, first-time fix rate, MTTR and open backlog. Add MTBF and uptime for critical assets.
How is MTTR calculated?
Divide the total repair time by the number of repairs in the period. Agree first whether the clock starts when the fault is reported or when work begins, because the two give very different results.
What is the difference between MTTR and MTBF?
MTTR measures how long repairs take. MTBF measures how long an asset runs between failures. A good maintenance programme lowers MTTR and raises MTBF.
What is a good PPM completion rate?
The right target depends on the contract and the team’s capacity. Rather than chasing a published benchmark, measure your own rate, find out why tasks are missed, and improve from there.
How often should maintenance KPIs be reviewed?
Monthly for most teams, with a longer review each quarter to look at trends and decide what to change.
For definitions of these terms in plain English, see our FM glossary.