---
title: Why is Maintenance Important?
description: Regular playground maintenance protects children, extends equipment life, manages risk, controls costs, and reflects a community’s commitment to safety.
---

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# [Why is Maintenance Important?](https://www.playcore.com/news/why-is-maintenance-important)

 Written by [Admin](https://www.playcore.com/news/author/admin) | May 4, 2018 12:45:00 PM

Well-maintained playground equipment can help children to develop cognitively, physically, communicatively, socially, and emotionally in a safer environment. Along with helping to promote children’s development, a quality maintenance program has many positive outcomes. 

Protect your investment**:** Play equipment, protective surfacing, planning, and site development of a playground are significant investments. It simply makes good economic sense to maintain the equipment to extend its life and protect your school or agency’s investment. 

Manage risk**: **Proper, routine, and timely maintenance is a way of managing risks in the community’s play areas, helping to protect users, and demonstrating the community’s standard of care. 

Improve children’s play experiences**:** When playground equipment is broken or otherwise unusable, children miss opportunities for play. That moment of connection with others and fun-filled learning might be lost. The better maintained the equipment, the better the chance that a child’s life is improved. Your work could make the difference! 

Promote community values**: **Maintained and groomed play environments are a source of pride for the community. Taking good care of the playground equipment and maintaining a beautiful environment is an expression of your community’s values.

Control expenses**:** Timely, preventive routine maintenance procedures help control expenses by reducing upkeep and replacement costs, enabling more accurate budgeting.

 

### When designing a playground maintenance program, managers should consider, among other factors, these concepts: 

Inspections should be routine, timely, and followed up with action. 

*Tip: Design the program to be consistent with manufacturer’s instructions when available and take into account environmental conditions. ***  
**

Have a system in place that ensures an appropriate response to hazards. 

- A hazard is anything that could potentially cause harm. Serious hazards should be immediately repaired, removed, or taken out of service.  

*Tip: Daily or high frequency inspections may help with responding to the dynamic play environment. *

A successful program requires comprehensive commitment. 

- Your program requires commitment that begins at the top because funds must be allocated to support it. 

Continually educate staff in these and other areas. 

- How to effectively identify problems and repair play equipment 

- How to provide ongoing maintenance 

- How to keep records and documentation of work 

When necessary, bring in outside vendors to perform inspections and/or do technical repairs. 

Practice complete documentation. 

- Complete records of maintenance and repairs are essential for a sound maintenance program and risk control. Providing documented evidence that maintenance is being performed verifies a standard of care as set forth by the operator and creates a historical record that could be useful. 

- Often, warranties 

By identifying and eliminating hazardous conditions, you can play an important role in ***Preserving the Play Environment, Promoting the Value of Play, and Protecting Children. ***

[View full post](https://www.playcore.com/news/why-is-maintenance-important)

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