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When a maintenance request is submitted, how quickly is it acknowledged, attended to and closed?
Response time measures how long it takes for a reported issue to receive attention. Work order completion rate looks at how many assigned jobs are completed within the expected timeframe.
Together, these metrics provide insight into the efficiency of the maintenance process.
Property owners can monitor:
Average response time
Average completion time
Percentage of work orders completed within the agreed timeframe
Number of overdue work orders
Volume of open work orders
The numbers become more useful when tracked over time.
For example, if the number of overdue work orders is consistently increasing, it may indicate growing workloads, resource constraints or problems within the maintenance process.
The objective is not simply to close as many work orders as possible.
It is to know whether reported issues are being handled efficiently and within reasonable service expectations.
Not all maintenance activity tells the same story.
Planned maintenance involves scheduled inspections, servicing and routine work intended to keep assets and building systems in good condition.
Reactive maintenance happens after something has already failed or developed a fault.
Tracking the proportion of planned work against reactive work helps property owners understand the maintenance pattern of their facility.
A property that requires frequent reactive intervention may be dealing with ageing assets, missed servicing, inadequate maintenance schedules or recurring problems that have not been properly addressed.
The aim is not to eliminate reactive maintenance completely. Unexpected faults will happen.
The important question is whether avoidable breakdowns are becoming a regular part of operating the property.
Monitoring this KPI can also help inform decisions about maintenance schedules, asset replacement and future operating costs.
A piece of equipment does not have to fail completely to disrupt a property.
An unreliable generator, air-conditioning system, lift, pump or access-control system can create repeated interruptions even when each individual fault is eventually repaired.
Equipment uptime measures how much of a defined period an asset remains available and operational.
But uptime should not be viewed in isolation. Property owners should also consider:
Number of breakdowns
Duration of downtime
Frequency of repeat faults
Maintenance history
Performance of critical assets
This helps distinguish between an isolated fault and a pattern of declining reliability.
For example, two pieces of equipment might both experience several faults in a year, but one may be restored within hours while the other remains unavailable for days. Their impact on the property is very different.
Keeping a property operational comes with ongoing costs, and those costs can tell a story of their own.
Energy consumption is one area worth monitoring, particularly in properties where electricity represents a significant operating expense.
Rather than looking at one month’s bill in isolation, property owners can track consumption over time and investigate significant changes.
An increase could be linked to changes in occupancy, operating hours, equipment performance or building conditions. The numbers need context, but unusual patterns can point to areas worth investigating.
Maintenance cost is another useful measure.
Looking only at the total amount spent can make comparisons difficult. Maintenance cost per square metre, for example, can provide additional context by relating expenditure to the size of the property.
Cost should also be considered alongside maintenance performance.
A reduction in maintenance spending may appear positive, but if it comes with more equipment failures or deferred work, the savings may simply be shifting the cost into the future.
The useful question is not simply:
“How much are we spending?”
It is:
“What are our costs telling us about the condition and operation of the property?”
There is another measure that technical reports cannot fully capture: how people experience the property.
Tenants, employees, residents and visitors interact with a facility differently from the teams responsible for managing it. They notice whether spaces are comfortable, clean and functional, whether issues are communicated properly and whether recurring problems are affecting their experience.
Occupant satisfaction can therefore provide a useful measure of facility management performance from the user’s perspective.
Depending on the property, feedback can cover:
Overall satisfaction
Cleanliness
Comfort and functionality
Communication about service issues
Quality of the facility experience
Recurring concerns
This is different from measuring maintenance response time.
A maintenance team may respond to a complaint within the expected timeframe, while the same underlying problem continues to affect occupants. Satisfaction data can help reveal that distinction.
When the same concern appears repeatedly, it deserves investigation rather than simply being recorded as another complaint.
What Should Property Owners Do With the Numbers?
Collecting KPIs is only the beginning.
The real value comes from using them to identify patterns and changes over time.
A useful approach is simple:
Establish a baseline.
Understand what normal performance looks like for the property.
Track consistently.
Use the same measures and reporting periods so changes can be identified.
Compare performance.
Look at current results against previous periods, agreed service levels or relevant property benchmarks.
Investigate the change.
Ask why a particular number has moved. An increase in reactive maintenance, for example, needs a different response from an increase in occupant satisfaction.
Take action.
Use the findings to adjust maintenance schedules, investigate recurring problems, review resources or plan future expenditure.
This also means there is no universal set of facility management KPIs that every property should copy.
A commercial office, residential development, retail centre and industrial facility can have very different operational priorities.
The right KPIs are the ones that help answer the questions that matter for that particular property.
Good Facility Management Should Be Measurable
Facility management involves hundreds of activities that happen largely behind the scenes.
Property owners should not have to rely solely on whether a task was completed or whether a complaint was eventually resolved to understand how their property is performing.
The right indicators provide another layer of visibility.
Response times can reveal how efficiently issues are handled. Planned versus reactive maintenance can show the nature of the maintenance workload. Equipment uptime can highlight asset reliability. Energy and maintenance costs can reveal changes in operational performance. Occupant feedback can show what the people using the property are actually experiencing.
No single number tells the whole story.
But together, the right facility management KPIs can give property owners a clearer picture of what is happening across their buildings and provide a stronger basis for deciding where attention, resources and investment are needed.
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