Which type of maintenance is intended to avoid service interruptions?

Preventative maintenance is a strategy designed to proactively maintain equipment and systems in various fields, including utility arboriculture. This type of maintenance involves regular inspections, servicing, and parts replacement aimed at keeping the infrastructure in optimal condition and preventing potential failures before they occur. By addressing potential issues ahead of time, preventative maintenance helps ensure that service interruptions are minimized.

This methodology is key to maintaining the reliability of utility services. For instance, in the context of trees and power lines, preventative measures may include routine tree trimming or assessing tree health to prevent branches from interfering with power lines, thereby avoiding outages.

In contrast, other forms of maintenance like reactive, emergency, and sporadic maintenance deal with issues after they arise, which is not conducive to avoiding interruptions. Reactive maintenance happens in response to failures, emergency maintenance deals with urgent problems that require immediate attention, and sporadic maintenance is done irregularly, all of which do not support the consistent effort needed to prevent service disruptions.