Preventive maintenance basics
Keep equipment reliable with planned maintenance: understand reactive, preventive and condition-based approaches, follow PM schedules and checklists, do operator basic care, record what you find, and resist deferring PM without a decision.
- Level
- Beginner
- Length
- About 45 minutes
- Contents
- 3 lessons · 1 video · final exam
- Status
- Published · updated 1 Oct 2026
Skills you'll practise
- Compare reactive, preventive and condition-based maintenance
- Read a PM schedule and identify overdue tasks
- Complete a PM checklist accurately, including findings and follow-ups
- Calculate simple MTBF and MTTR figures and explain what they show
Course outline
- 1.Preventive maintenance basicsVideo · 2 min
- 2.Why plan maintenance?Lesson · 15 min
- 3.Schedules, checklists and recordsLesson · 16 min
- 4.Measuring reliability: MTBF and MTTRLesson · 14 min
- 5.Preventive maintenance basics: knowledge checkKnowledge check · 15 questions
- 6.Skip the PM this week?Scenario
- 7.Final exam8 questions · passing it completes the course, so people who already know the material can test out
Sources it draws on
The lessons and questions are written from these references, so learners can go back to the original.
- Equipment manufacturers' maintenance manuals and lubrication charts
- Your site's maintenance management system and PM procedures
- General reliability practice (MTBF, MTTR)
See it with your own jobs and topics
Tell us about your team and we'll walk you through setup, from choosing jobs to your first skills check.