Maintenance Audit
A practical starting point for assessing whether equipment maintenance supports reliability, safety and production continuity through effective preventive and corrective maintenance.
What are we trying to establish?
Determine whether equipment maintenance supports reliability, safety and production continuity through effective preventive and corrective maintenance.
Risks worth paying attention to
What should you request?
- Asset and critical equipment register
- Preventive maintenance plan and schedule
- Completed job cards and work orders
- Breakdown and downtime reports
- Corrective maintenance records
- Spare-parts usage and stock reports
- Equipment history and condition reports
- Maintenance cost reports
- Safety inspection and bypass records
Understand the process before testing.
- Who initiates, reviews and approves transactions?
- Which duties should be separated?
- What system controls and approval limits apply?
- How are exceptions identified, approved and monitored?
- How does management know key controls actually operated?
Practical tests you can perform
Compare planned maintenance with actual completion
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Verify completed work to job cards and evidence
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Analyse preventive versus corrective maintenance
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Identify recurring failures and long downtime
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Review overdue maintenance by criticality
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Inspect temporary repairs and open defects
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Review safety interlocks and bypasses
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Assess spare-parts availability for critical assets
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Analyse maintenance cost trends
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Review ageing assets and replacement plans
Obtain appropriate evidence, investigate exceptions and document your conclusion.
Things that should make you look deeper
- Transactions or activities outside normal patterns
- Missing or retrospective approvals
- Repeated exceptions without root-cause action
- Manual adjustments with weak supporting evidence
- Key controls dependent on one person
- Management reports that cannot be reconciled to source records
Questions that can open up the process
- What can go wrong in this process?
- Which controls are most important, and who performs them?
- Where does the process depend heavily on manual intervention?
- Which exceptions occur most often, and why?
- What information does management use to know the process is working?
Need a more detailed checklist?
Steal My Checklist contains ready-to-use audit procedures designed to help you structure fieldwork across key business areas.
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