PM Compliance
The share of scheduled preventive maintenance completed within its window. Commonly targeted at 90 percent, and often far below it in practice.
PM compliance asks a narrow question: of the services that came due in a period, how many were done on time. It is the number most fleets report to their own management first, because it is simple and hard to argue with.
Ninety percent is the figure usually named as the goal. A 2023 NAFA review of its 100 Best Fleets in North America, cited in San Diego’s fleet audit, found an average target of about 90 percent against actual average compliance of about 86 percent, so even among fleets that compete on their performance the target is not routinely met.
Below that group the gap can be enormous, and public audits are where it becomes visible. San Diego’s auditor found that in FY2023 only 20 percent of preventive maintenance services citywide were completed on time, rising to 39 percent once a 10 percent grace period was allowed. Safety inspections were on time 35 percent of the time while environmental inspections ran at 96 percent, which is a useful reminder that a single citywide figure can hide two very different problems.
That is also why the window matters as much as the number. A fleet counting anything done in the same month as on time will report a very different figure from one counting a fixed mileage, and neither is wrong until they are compared with each other. Before benchmarking against another agency, establish what each of you counts as on time.
The other thing compliance does not tell you is whether the interval was right. A fleet can hit its target against a schedule that services vehicles too often, which wastes money quietly, or too rarely, which shows up later as road calls. High compliance against a bad schedule looks identical on a report to high compliance against a good one.