Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM)

Emergency call-outs are expensive, disruptive, and often avoidable. A well-run planned preventative maintenance programme helps you reduce breakdowns, protect your site, and keep drainage and pumping systems operating reliably.

ICE Drainage provides PPM for drainage, pump stations, and wastewater systems across London and the Home Counties, supporting hospitality operators, facilities management teams, and commercial property portfolios.

What is PPM?

PPM is a scheduled programme of inspections, cleaning, testing, and minor remedial work designed to prevent failures before they happen. For drainage and pumping systems, this typically focuses on reducing blockages and build-up from grease, wipes, silt, and scale, identifying early signs of wear, corrosion, or damage, testing alarms and level controls to prevent overflow incidents, and improving reliability while reducing reactive call-outs.

If you're managing a high-use site, especially in hospitality, PPM is often the most cost-effective way to stay in control.

Why PPM matters for hospitality and commercial sites

Drainage and pump failures don't just create mess, they create downtime. A PPM programme helps you reduce emergency call-outs and out-of-hours costs, prevent toilet and kitchen shutdowns and guest disruption, reduce odours and hygiene complaints, protect basements, plant rooms, and other critical areas from flooding, extend the life of pumps, valves, and controls, and improve compliance and risk management for FM teams.

If you've had repeat alarms, repeat blockages, or repeat pump issues, PPM is usually the fastest route to stability.

What's included in our drainage and pump PPM

Every site is different, so we build PPM around your system type, usage, and risk profile. Typical elements include the following.

Drainage maintenance

Routine drain inspections and condition checks, targeted cleaning such as jetting where appropriate, a focus on high-risk lines like kitchens, staff areas, and high-footfall toilets, and recommendations to reduce repeat blockages.

Pump station and sump maintenance

Pump chamber cleaning to remove sludge, silt, wipes, and debris, checks on pump performance and run times where data is available, and visual checks for impeller blockage risk and abnormal wear.

Level controls and alarms

Testing float switches for free movement and correct operation, testing high-level alarms and confirming trigger points, and identifying snagging, tangling, or debris build-up that causes failures.

Valves and backflow prevention

Checks for symptoms of non-return valve failure, such as backflow, short cycling, or rising levels, and recommendations for repair or replacement where required.

Reporting and recommendations

Clear notes on what was done, identified risks and priorities, and practical next steps, split into immediate and planned.

PPM frequencies: how often should maintenance happen?

PPM frequency depends on usage and risk. As a guide, high-use hospitality sites with busy kitchens and toilets usually need more frequent visits, commercial buildings with steady usage suit regular scheduled checks, and sites with basements or pump stations need maintenance aligned to overflow risk and alarm history.

If you're not sure, we can recommend a sensible schedule based on your system and previous issues.

Common problems PPM helps prevent

PPM is designed to prevent the issues that cause the majority of emergency call-outs, including blocked drains and repeat blockages, fat, oil, and grease build-up, pump breakdowns caused by debris and sludge, float switch failures and snagging, high-level alarms and overflow incidents, backflow due to non-return valve issues, and rising main restrictions and performance problems.

PPM for multi-site facilities management

If you manage a portfolio, PPM helps you standardise maintenance and reduce surprises. We can support multi-site scheduling and consistent visit routines, prioritisation of high-risk sites based on history and usage, clear reporting for internal stakeholders, and a practical approach that reduces your reactive workload.

Why choose ICE Drainage?

We support commercial and hospitality clients who need reliability, responsiveness, and clear communication.

• Coverage across London and the Home Counties
• A commercial-first approach for hospitality, FM, and managed estates
• Competitive pricing and practical recommendations
• Safety-led engineers working to industry standards
• Credentials including Safe Contractor, SSSTS, and Constructionline Gold

ICE Drainage is a specialist service expansion of ICE Cleaning, a leading sewage cleaning company in the UK.

Book a PPM programme

Want to reduce emergency call-outs and keep your drainage and pumping systems reliable? ICE Drainage can help.

Contact ICE Drainage today to discuss a planned preventative maintenance programme. We cover London and the Home Counties for single-site and multi-site maintenance.