New terms to describe maintenance have crept into the vernacular in the elevator industry such as Predictive Maintenance, Breakdown Maintenance & Call Back Maintenance. In truth, these tend to mean that you are really getting No Maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance consists of systematic inspection, detection, correction, and prevention of developing failures, before they become actual or major failures where the equipment is periodically examined, lubricated, adjusted and tested to minimize breakdown, prolong equipment life and maintain safe, efficient, reliable performance.

Breakdown Maintenance & Call-Back Maintenance, as the names imply, occurs when the building manager calls the elevator company because an elevator isn't working properly. The technicians focus on investigating and resolving the immediate problem. This is not Preventive Maintenance, even though the technician will perform some maintenance while they are on sight.

Some service contracts today are being structured as performance-based agreements. In other words, the effectiveness of the service team is measured by the number of call-backs or unscheduled service outages that occur over a given time period. For instance, the contract may state that call-back appointments are to be limited to some set number per year. If the actual results come in better than this, the maintenance company may receive a bonus; if results are poorer, the company may incur a penalty. Another trend is a greater focus on the elevators' uptime, or the percent of time that they're running as they should.