Reliability Centered vs Risk-Based Maintenance

Reliability Centered Maintenance vs Risk-Based Maintenance: on the surface, they sound like the same thing. Risk-Based Maintenance analyzes whether something is likely to fail. If something is prone to failure, it’s not reliable. So, are these two Integrated Facility Maintenance approaches the same thing or are they different?

Reliability Centered Maintenance vs Risk-Based Maintenance are two different concepts that indicate your organization’s ability to stay operational. Inherently, neither is better than the other; they simply play different roles.

Understanding Reliability Centered Maintenance

Reliability Centered Maintenance analyzes, as you may guess, the reliability factor of a piece of equipment. For a basic example, your sidewalks are relatively reliable. They can quite literally last for decades before requiring any kind of updating as not much goes into the system.

Your HVAC system, on the other hand, is full of individual components ranging from thermostats to filters to blowers and beyond. Each component can contribute to a system breakdown.

When budgeting for your annual maintenance costs, Reliability Centered Maintenance can help you determine which systems to budget more for as they’re the ones that are more prone to reliability failures.

Understanding Risk-Based Maintenance

Risk-Based Maintenance is a probability formula that analyzes the likelihood of failure, what impacts or leads to failure, and how to mitigate it. To better understand a Risk-Based Maintenance approach, we’ll use your facility’s plumbing as our example.

First, let’s define failure. It’s pretty simple really: the pipes can clog up. Next, what are the factors that could lead to failure? Those range from the age of the pipes to the number of tenants or employees in your facility to outside factors such as the city or county sewer system being used.

How can you mitigate the risk of failure? There’s not a whole lot you can do with the city or county lines if they’re unreliable. However, aging plumbing within your building, while not an easy fix, is a direct action you can take to decrease the likelihood of a plumbing backup from occurring on property.

Risk-Based Maintenance analyzes everything that can lead to failure and develops a plan to reduce the chances it will fail.

Reliability Centered Maintenance vs Risk-Based Maintenance: Which Should You Choose?

At the surface, these two approaches seem related. Where they differ is how you deal with the data from each.

Risk can be reduced which increases reliability. However, while you can update your HVAC system, there will always be multiple components each with their own reliability score.

So, which should you choose? It boils down to everything from your maintenance budget to your company goals to your support system. Neither is inherently better than the other. Rather, they look at your systems from a different perspective and they can help you make more informed choices.

If we had to promote one over the other, we’d recommend Risk-Based Maintenance. This system helps to improve reliability and eliminate waste.

LESCO360 can help you make the right decision.

The best solution is to work with an IFM organization that can help you understand reliability while also understanding risk. Our team specializes in keeping your facilities operational through proactive IFM. We can help you make the right decision between Reliability Centered Maintenance vs Risk-Based Maintenance.

Reach out to us via our short CONTACT form and we’ll schedule a time to help you make the right choice for your facility.