What a Floor Scrubber PM Visit
Should Include
A preventive maintenance visit that ends with someone telling you "it looks fine" is not a PM visit. Here is what should actually get checked, and the report you should walk away with.
A complete floor scrubber PM visit checks the battery and charging system, squeegee, brushes or pads, recovery tank and solution filter, hour meter, and overall condition. Each item should be marked pass, fail, or not applicable on a written checklist, and you should leave with a report, not a verbal all clear.
Preventive maintenance on floor equipment has a reputation problem. Facilities pay for it, a technician shows up, something happens for twenty minutes, and the machine goes back to work. Whether that twenty minutes actually covered anything is hard to verify after the fact, which is exactly why PM visits get skipped or shortened first when a vendor is cutting corners.
The fix is not complicated. It is a written checklist, specific to the machine, with every item marked, plus a report you actually receive. Here is what that checklist should cover.
The checklist: what should actually get checked
The exact list varies by machine type, but a walk-behind or ride-on autoscrubber PM visit should cover these groups at minimum:
Battery and charging
- Water level, charge, and terminal condition on wet-cell batteries
- Charger connection and charge cycle behavior
Squeegee
- Blade condition, nicks, and wear
- Whether the blade needs rotating or replacing
Brushes or pads
- Bristle or pad wear
- Drive engagement
Tanks and filtration
- Recovery tank and float shutoff, lid gasket condition
- Solution filter, clean or clogged
Readings
- Hour meter, logged against the service interval
Overall condition
- Leaks, damage, loose panels or guards
Burnishers and extractors have their own versions of this list, pad holders and drive systems on a burnisher, solution and recovery systems and hoses on an extractor, but the principle is the same: every item gets checked, and every item gets marked.
The report you should get after every visit
A PM visit should end with documentation, not a verbal summary on the technician's way out. At minimum, that means the completed checklist itself, with every item marked pass, fail, or not applicable, and photos attached where something needed a closer look or a part needed replacing. If a fail item was found, the report should say what it was and what happens next, whether that is a follow-up repair, a part on order, or a recommendation.
This is also where the hour meter reading earns its keep. Logged at every visit, it tells you how hard the machine is actually running between visits, which is a better basis for scheduling the next PM than a flat quarterly or annual calendar.
How to tell if your vendor is actually doing this
Ask to see a completed checklist from your last visit, not a description of what the visit usually includes. If your vendor cannot produce one, the PM program exists on paper only. A vendor running PM visits through maintenance software should be able to pull up the exact checklist, the marks on every item, and the photos attached to that visit, for that machine, on request.
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Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on run hours and duty cycle more than the calendar. A machine running every night in a high-traffic facility needs more frequent attention than one used a few times a week. A technician who logs hour meter readings at each visit can tell you what interval actually fits your usage, instead of guessing from a generic schedule.
Pass means the item was checked and is within normal condition. Fail means it was checked and needs attention, ideally with a note on what was found. Not applicable means the item does not apply to that machine or configuration. The point is that every item gets a mark. A checklist with blank rows is not evidence anything was checked.
A real PM report shows what was checked, what passed, what failed, and what was done about it, along with photos where they matter. If a tech hands you a verbal summary and nothing in writing, you have no record for the next visit to compare against.
That is the purpose of the checklist. A squeegee that is wearing but still functional, a battery terminal that is starting to corrode, a solution filter that is partially clogged: these show up as a fail or a note on a PM visit well before they cause the machine to go down mid-shift.
Yes. An autonomous scrubber still has a battery, a squeegee, brushes or pads, and a recovery tank. The navigation system adds sensors to check, but the mechanical PM items are the same ones that keep any scrubber running.
See what a real PM checklist looks like
Millennium runs floor equipment PM visits through our own maintenance software, the same system behind our cleaning operations. Every item gets checked, marked, and reported, for autoscrubbers, burnishers, and extractors, any brand.
Founder & CEO, Millennium Facility Services
Austin Jones founded Millennium Facility Services and personally walks the facilities his teams service across the Southeast.