What the number actually means, how it gets gamed, and how to track it — including a free spreadsheet with no email wall, because a template shouldn't cost you a drip campaign.
PM compliance is simple arithmetic: PMs completed on time, divided by PMs scheduled in the window. Schedule 300 this month, complete 286 inside their window, and you're at 95.3%. That's the whole formula.
The arithmetic isn't the hard part. The hard part is that the number gets gamed three ways: PMs closed without being done, overdue PMs quietly rescheduled so they were never "late," and PMs that never generated at all — you can't miss a PM that doesn't exist. A compliance number is only as honest as the system generating the denominator.
The only plant running 100% PM compliance is a plant that's lying — to the auditor, or to itself. Real plants live somewhere in the 90s. Crews get pulled to breakdowns. A rebuild eats nine days. Scaffold access slips. Those are facts of plant life, not failures of character.
What separates a well-run plant from a pencil-whipped one isn't the percentage — it's the overdue list. A 94% plant that can show you its 18 overdue PMs with reasons logged is in control. A 100% plant with no overdue list has a reporting problem wearing a bow.
Two different questions hide inside "compliance." Completion: did the PM get done at all? Schedule: did it get done inside its window? A monthly bearing inspection done on day 45 counts for completion and fails schedule — and the bearing doesn't care that the paperwork eventually caught up. Track both. If you only track completion, your schedule will drift a week per quarter and the number will never tell you.
Some PMs are housekeeping. Some are legal obligations — the baghouse differential-pressure check on your Title V permit, the guarding inspection OSHA expects to see. They look identical in a spreadsheet, and that's the trap: an auditor doesn't want your overall compliance number — they want the regulatory subset, with completion evidence, on demand. Tag those PMs to the program they answer to — Title V, OSHA, or any program you define — and the audit answer becomes one filter instead of one consultant.
A working monthly tracker: scheduled, completed, completed on time, the percentage, and an overdue count with reasons. Three example months filled in with realistic numbers — 94.1%, 96.7%, 91.3% — because that's what real plants look like. No email wall. Take it.
Download the tracker ↓If the spreadsheet stops scaling, that's what Gage is for — the compliance number lives on the dashboard, every overdue PM carries a logged reason, and the pricing is published.
A 30-minute walkthrough of PM scheduling and compliance tracking — with your PM count and your permit obligations in mind.
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