Commercial PPM & Maintenance Contracts
Planned preventative maintenance is sold as a way of avoiding breakdowns, and it does that. But the reason it exists is that operating commercial air conditioning puts legal duties on you that nothing else discharges: leak checks at a frequency set by refrigerant charge, an equipment record for every system, and records you can produce on demand. A PPM contract is the mechanism for all of it. The rest of the commercial side, including installation and TM44, is on the commercial page.
Free pre-contract survey • F-Gas registered engineers • Single site or national multi-site
What a PPM contract is really for
Commercial operators carry duties that domestic customers do not. None of them are onerous individually. Collectively they are a filing job that nobody has time for, and they are the reason contracts exist.
| Your duty as operator | What we do about it |
|---|---|
| Have leak checks carried out at the right frequency | Frequency is set by each system’s CO₂-equivalent refrigerant charge, charge weight multiplied by the refrigerant’s global warming potential, not by how many kilowatts it puts out. Two systems of identical output on different refrigerants can sit on completely different check intervals. We work out which of your systems are in scope and put them on a schedule. |
| Keep an equipment record for every system | Refrigerant type and charge, work carried out, gas added or recovered, who did it and when. We maintain it for every system we look after and hand you a copy at each visit, so your file is current without anyone having to chase it. |
| Use appropriately qualified engineers | All refrigerant work is carried out by F-Gas registered engineers and the certification sits in your file. This is not a box to tick once. It applies to every visit. |
| Arrange TM44 inspections where systems are in scope | More than 12kW under one person’s control in a building means a statutory energy inspection every five years by an accredited assessor, lodged on the national register. We tell you whether yours qualify and arrange it. Full detail on TM44 here → |
| Recover refrigerant properly at end of life | When equipment is replaced or decommissioned the refrigerant is recovered, disposed of correctly and documented, so the compliance trail has no hole in it at exactly the point an auditor would look. |
| Protect the manufacturer’s warranty | Most manufacturers make their extended warranty conditional on documented annual servicing. A warranty claim refused for want of a service record is an expensive way to save the cost of a visit. |
General guidance, not legal advice. What applies to you depends on your equipment, refrigerant charge and premises. We confirm it at survey and write it into the proposal, so you are not taking our word for it in the abstract.
How we work
Electronic leak detection and a temperature split, not gauges
Putting gauges on a system to “check the pressures” is still normal practice in a lot of the trade, and we do not do it on a service. Every time a set of gauges goes on, a small amount of refrigerant is vented, the schrader valve wears a little, and there is an opportunity for moisture to get in. Do that twice a year for ten years and the checking has caused more harm than the thing it was checking for.
Instead the engineer uses an electronic leak detector around the joints and coils, and takes a temperature split across the indoor coil. A system that is short of gas tells you so through its performance. If the numbers say there is a problem, then we connect, with a reason, rather than as a ritual.
The paperwork is the product
Anybody can wash a filter. What a contract is buying you is a file that stands up: an asset register that lists every indoor and outdoor unit with its model, output, refrigerant type and charge; a leak-check schedule derived from those charges; a service record per visit; and the certification of the people who did the work.
That file is what a buyer’s solicitor asks for, what an insurer asks for, what an ISO 14001 auditor asks for and what an enforcement officer asks for. It is also what makes the next engineer: ours or anyone else’s : useful on their first visit rather than their third.
What happens on a visit
A contract is built from three kinds of visit, mixed to suit the site. A restaurant kitchen and a quiet first-floor office both need maintaining and they do not need the same thing at the same rate.
The full visit. Indoor and outdoor coils cleaned, filters cleaned or replaced, condensate system flushed and proved, electrical connections checked and tightened, electronic leak check, temperature split taken and recorded, fan and compressor operation assessed, controls checked and time schedules reviewed, mountings and pipework insulation inspected. Everything measured is written down.
A shorter performance check between majors. Filters, condensate, temperature split, leak check, obvious mechanical or electrical defects, and a look at whether the controls are still set the way they were left. This is the visit that catches the condensate pump that has started to struggle, before it finds the ceiling tiles.
The short, frequent one. Filters and condensate only, for kitchens, salons, hairdressers, gyms, workshops and anywhere else the air carries grease, dust, product or fibre. On the wrong site this is the difference between a system that lasts fifteen years and one that lasts six.
Every proposal carries a scope matrix showing exactly which tasks fall in which visit type and roughly how long each takes on site, so you can see what you are buying rather than reading the words “full service” and hoping.
How often, and why it is not one answer
The honest position is that visit frequency is a function of the environment and the duty, not of a price list. We would rather set it at survey than sell you a number now.
| What sets the interval | Why |
|---|---|
| What the air is carrying | Grease, dust, hair, fibre, flour, plaster. A commercial kitchen or a salon loads filters and coils at a rate an office never will, and a blocked coil costs efficiency immediately and compressor life eventually. |
| How many hours it runs | A system running twelve hours a day, six days a week is doing three or four times the work of a domestic one. Wear is a function of running hours, not of calendar years. |
| What the refrigerant charge is | The statutory leak-check interval falls out of the CO₂-equivalent charge. Sometimes that duty, rather than the mechanical need, is what sets the rhythm, in which case we build the service visits around the checks you have to have anyway. |
| What it costs you when it stops | A comms room, a server cupboard or a kitchen line cannot sit and wait for a part. Where downtime is genuinely expensive, more frequent visits and a held spares position are cheaper than the alternative, and where it is not, we will say so rather than sell you visits you do not need. |
How we price it
No hidden mechanics. These are the positions we work to, and they are the same for a single shop as for a forty-site estate.
| Our position | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| The hourly labour rate is published in your proposal | Stated as a figure, so any uplift or discount is something you can calculate rather than something you have to take on trust. We do not publish a day rate or a minimum charge, because both are ways of charging for time nobody worked. |
| Parts are quoted for approval before any work proceeds | No standing markup percentage, and nothing fitted that you have not agreed. On a breakdown that means a call, a price and a decision, not an invoice with a part on it you first hear about afterwards. |
| Travel is inside the visit price | Not a separate line that varies with where the engineer happened to start from that morning. Multi-site estates get the benefit of that rather than paying for it four times. |
| Out-of-hours work carries a stated uplift | On the labour rate, set out in the proposal. Plenty of sites want their maintenance done outside trading hours, which is fine. It just needs to be visible in the price rather than discovered in the invoice. |
| Commercial maintenance carries VAT at the standard rate | Worth saying explicitly, because the reduced rate that applies to some domestic energy-saving work does not apply here. Every figure we quote you is stated excluding VAT with the VAT shown separately. |
When something breaks
A maintenance contract is judged on the day something goes wrong. Here is what we commit to, in plain terms, and what we deliberately do not promise.
An engineer calls you back, not a call handler taking a message. A surprising proportion of faults are a tripped breaker, a controller in the wrong mode, a blocked condensate switch or a filter alarm, and those are resolved on the phone in ten minutes rather than in three days and a visit.
Where triage cannot fix it, an engineer attends within 48 working hours. Contract holders come ahead of non-contract work, which is the practical value of being on a contract when the weather turns and everybody phones at once.
You get told what is wrong, what it costs and what happens if it waits. Parts are quoted for approval. Nothing proceeds because an engineer was already on site and it seemed easier.
We do not advertise a free call-out, because somebody pays for it and it is you, inside the contract price. We do not promise same-day attendance as standard, because on the hottest week of the year it would not be true, and a maintenance promise that fails in a heatwave is worth nothing.
Four things we would rather you heard from us
Every maintenance contract has edges. These are ours, stated before you sign rather than discovered on an invoice.
| The edge | What it means |
|---|---|
| Access equipment beyond a step ladder is not included | Podium steps, towers, scaffolding and powered access are chargeable. If plant is on a roof or high on a wall we will identify it at survey and price the access properly, rather than quoting a visit rate that quietly assumes somebody can reach. |
| We do not arrange landlord or third-party access | Where plant sits in a demised area, a riser, a neighbouring unit or on a roof under someone else’s control, arranging entry is yours. We will tell you exactly what we need and when, but an engineer who cannot get in is a visit you have paid for. |
| Maintenance is not a guarantee against failure | It substantially reduces unplanned failure and it catches the cheap-to-fix things before they become expensive ones. It does not make a fifteen-year-old compressor immortal. Where a system is near the end of its life we will tell you that plainly and let you plan for replacement rather than keep charging you to maintain it. |
| A neglected system costs more on the first visit | Taking on a system that has not been touched in years usually means a remedial quote before it can go on a normal schedule: blocked coils, seized fan bearings, failed condensate pumps, a refrigerant record that does not exist. That is a one-off and we price it separately and visibly, rather than burying it in the contract. |
We will take on systems we did not install
Most of the commercial plant we maintain was put in by somebody else, often by somebody nobody can now name. That is normal and it is not a problem.
| Situation | Where we stand |
|---|---|
| Any manufacturer | We are not tied to one brand. Daikin, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Panasonic, Bosch, Hisense, Midea, Toshiba, LG, if it is on the wall or in the ceiling we will maintain it. |
| Orphaned systems welcome | Installer gone, paperwork lost, nobody sure what refrigerant is in it. The survey rebuilds the record from the nameplates. It is the commonest situation we walk into. |
| Multi-site estates | One schedule, one point of contact, one compliance file covering every site, and consistent records across all of them, which is usually the thing that is missing when an estate has accumulated four different local contractors. |
| Handover from another contractor | We do not need to slate the last firm to take the work on. We need the records if there are any, and a survey if there are not. |
Common questions
What is the difference between PPM and just calling someone when it breaks?+
Cost and paperwork, mainly. Reactive-only maintenance means you pay full rate at the worst possible moment, you wait behind contract holders, and you have no compliance record at all, so the F-Gas leak checks you are legally required to have are simply not happening. Planned maintenance also catches the cheap faults. A condensate pump replaced on a service visit costs a fraction of the same pump replaced after it has been through a suspended ceiling.
How often does a commercial system need servicing?+
It depends on the environment, the running hours and the refrigerant charge rather than on a standard number. A quiet office might sit comfortably on one major and one interim visit a year; a busy kitchen or salon may need filter and drain visits quarterly on top of that. Where the statutory leak-check interval is more frequent than the mechanical need, that sets the rhythm. We set it at survey and write the reasoning into the proposal.
Do you check the refrigerant pressures on every service?+
No, and deliberately not. Connecting gauges vents a little refrigerant, wears the schrader valve and risks admitting moisture every single time. On a service we use an electronic leak detector and take a temperature split across the indoor coil: a system short of gas shows it in performance. Gauges go on for fault diagnosis and for a re-gas, where there is a reason for them.
Will you maintain equipment you did not install?+
Yes, and most of what we maintain falls into that category. Any manufacturer, any age, including systems whose original installer is long gone and whose paperwork has vanished. The survey rebuilds the asset record from the equipment itself.
Is the survey really free?+
Yes, and it is always a separate visit. We do not combine it with a first service and describe that as free. You get the asset register from it whether or not you go on to sign anything.
Does a maintenance contract cover the TM44 inspection?+
No. The TM44 inspection is a separate statutory duty that has to be carried out by an accredited energy assessor and lodged on the national register. We identify whether your systems are in scope, hold the records the assessor needs and arrange the inspection, but we do not carry it out ourselves.
Can you cover sites outside your usual area?+
For multi-site estates, yes. National coverage is something we arrange rather than something we pretend to have engineers standing by for in every county. Tell us where the sites are and we will tell you honestly how we would cover them.
What happens if a part is needed?+
It is quoted for approval before any work proceeds. You get the price and the consequence of waiting, and you decide. Nothing is fitted on the assumption that you would have said yes.
Start with the survey
It is free, it is a visit of its own, and it produces the asset register that answers your leak-check frequency and your TM44 position at the same time. Whether you then want a contract from us is a separate conversation, and the register is yours regardless.