Facilities maintenance guide
SFG20 explained: what it is, whether it's a legal requirement, and how to actually deliver it.
Chris Morgan, Founder of Fixray · Last updated
SFG20 is the UK's recognised library of planned preventive maintenance (PPM) task schedules. This is a plain-English guide for facilities and maintenance managers — what it is, the honest answer on whether it's the law, and how to turn a schedule into evidenced, completed work.
SFG20 meaning, in one line
SFG20 means the UK's recognised library of planned preventive maintenance schedules — a task-by-task specification of what each building asset needs, how often, and to what standard, published by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA).
In plain English: it is the maintenance industry's agreed answer to "what counts as looking after this asset properly?", written down per asset type — so a fire alarm panel or an air handling unit gets the same recognised regime whoever maintains it.
What is SFG20?
SFG20 is the industry-standard library of planned preventive maintenance (PPM) task schedules for building engineering services, published and maintained by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA).
Each schedule sets out the maintenance tasks a given asset type needs, how often, and to what standard — so a facilities team maintaining a chiller, a fire alarm, or an emergency lighting system is working to a common, recognised specification rather than a spec someone wrote from memory.
SFG20 is a subscription product with its own software: you licence access to BESA's schedule library and it is kept current as regulations change. Fixray is not an SFG20 schedule library and does not resell one — this page explains the standard and where a maintenance system like Fixray fits alongside it.
Is SFG20 a legal requirement?
No — SFG20 is not itself a law, and using it is not legally mandatory. It is the widely recognised way to demonstrate that your planned maintenance meets the statutory duties that ARE law.
UK building owners and duty holders carry statutory obligations under legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and — for higher-risk buildings — the Building Safety Act 2022. In healthcare, the Health Technical Memoranda (HTMs) set the expected maintenance standards; for water systems, the Approved Code of Practice L8 governs Legionella control.
None of those name SFG20. What they require is that in-scope assets are maintained to a suitable standard and that you can evidence it. SFG20 is the maintenance industry's answer to "what does a suitable standard actually look like, task by task?" — which is why insurers, auditors, and clients so often ask for SFG20-aligned PPM even though no statute names it.
This is general information, not legal advice — a competent person or your responsible person should confirm what applies to your buildings.
Is SFG20 a legal requirement? The full answer, with the regulations cited
What SFG20 covers
SFG20 covers the planned maintenance of building engineering assets, with each task classified by criticality so teams can prioritise the work that carries statutory or safety weight.
Asset types
Schedules span the building services estate — HVAC and air handling units (AHUs), fire alarms and fire dampers, emergency lighting, fixed-wire (EICR) and portable appliance (PAT) testing, water treatment and Legionella control, lifts, and more.
Red, pink, amber and green task coding
Every task carries one of four colours: red for statutory tasks, pink for tasks your sector or organisation makes mandatory, amber for function-critical best practice, and green for discretionary work. It makes the non-negotiables obvious at a glance.
Schedule structure & frequency
Each schedule lists the individual tasks, the skill level required, and the frequency — daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual — so a maintenance regime can be built and resourced from a recognised baseline rather than guesswork.
SFG20 red, pink, amber and green explained
SFG20 rates every task with one of four criticality colours, so the work you cannot defer is obvious before anyone opens a schedule. BESA sets a recommended rating from legislation, regulation and industry best practice, and organisations can adjust it to their own sector.
| Colour | What it covers | Can you defer it? |
|---|---|---|
| Red | Statutory tasks — the maintenance needed to meet a legal duty. | No. A missed red task is where compliance exposure starts, and it is the first thing an auditor looks for. |
| Pink | Mandatory, business-critical tasks — required by your sector or your own organisation, even where no law requires them. | Not in practice. The requirement comes from your sector or organisation rather than the law, but for you it is still mandatory. |
| Amber | Optimal tasks — function-critical, industry best practice that keeps an asset running reliably. | Sometimes. It is not a legal requirement, but skipping it raises the risk of unexpected failure and costly downtime. |
| Green | Discretionary, non-critical maintenance. | Yes, with the least consequence — these are the first to flex when budget or resource is tight. |
How often planned maintenance typically comes round
SFG20 sets a frequency per task. These are the cadences a UK venue is usually resourcing against, and the shape a maintenance system has to be able to hold.
| Cadence | Typical maintenance it carries |
|---|---|
| Weekly | Fire-alarm call-point test (a different call point each week); flushing little-used water outlets. |
| Monthly | Emergency-lighting function test; sentinel hot and cold water temperature checks. |
| Quarterly | Plant and air handling unit inspections — filters, belts, drive and condition checks. |
| Six-monthly | Thorough examination of passenger lifts under the LOLER regulations. |
| Annual | Full-duration emergency-lighting test; fire-damper drop testing; pressure-system inspection. |
| Multi-year | Fixed-wire installation testing (EICR) — commonly every five years for commercial premises. |
Indicative only. The frequency that applies to a given asset comes from the SFG20 schedule you licence and your own risk assessment, not from this page.
SFG20 standards and codes: what's in the library
"The SFG20 standards" are BESA's library of maintenance schedules, each written for a particular kind of asset or building system. BESA describes it as over 1,500 schedules spanning 70+ equipment types and building systems, from lifts, boilers and air conditioning to fire safety, catering equipment and building fabric.
Every schedule has a reference code
Schedules are identified by a number and a name. BESA's own FAQs give examples such as 23-05 Gas Extinguishing Systems, 29-01 Heat Exchangers and 35-01 Thermal Insulation – Sheet. When someone asks for an asset's "SFG20 code", this reference is usually what they mean.
Every task has a criticality colour
Each task inside a schedule is rated red, pink, amber or green, from statutory to discretionary. The four ratings are explained in the table above.
Every schedule has a unit of measure
A schedule applies per whole system, per item, per square metre or per linear metre. That unit tells you how its service timings scale across your estate.
A core library, plus specialist sets
Alongside the core library, BESA publishes schedule sets for building fabric, catering, security, and mothballing and reactivating buildings, plus content for sectors including healthcare, schools and universities.
This describes how the library is organised. The schedules themselves — the tasks and how often they are due — are BESA's licensed content and are not reproduced here.
Sources for this section and the colour ratings above: BESA's SFG20 FAQs and What is SFG20? pages, checked 18 September 2026.
How to actually deliver SFG20
Owning the schedule library is the start, not the finish. The standard only protects you once the tasks are scheduled, assigned to someone, completed on time, and recorded with evidence an auditor will accept.
- 1
Scheduled
Turn the relevant SFG20 schedules into a live maintenance calendar — recurring jobs at the daily, weekly, monthly, and annual cadences each task specifies, so nothing depends on someone remembering.
- 2
Assigned
Every task needs an owner — an in-house engineer or a contractor — with the skill level the schedule calls for, so red statutory tasks never sit unallocated.
- 3
Recorded
As work is done it is logged against the specific asset: who did it, when, and the outcome. A gap in the record is, in practice, a gap in compliance.
- 4
Evidenced
When an insurer, an EHO, or a client asks, you can produce the trail — photos, timestamps, and sign-off — that shows the statutory tasks were completed, not just planned. On Track and Operate, that trail is kept per asset.
How Fixray helps you deliver SFG20
Fixray is the execution layer, not the standard. You bring the SFG20 schedules; Fixray is where the recurring tasks get scheduled, assigned, completed, and evidenced — on any phone, with a record that never resets.
- Recurring & scheduled maintenance in the shape SFG20 describes — daily, weekly, monthly, annual cycles, each with a due date and an owner.
- Assignment to an engineer or contractor, so statutory (red) tasks are never left unallocated.
- A completion record on every job — assignee, timestamp, and a photo when the fixer adds one — building the evidence trail auditors and insurers ask for.
- On Track and Operate, per-asset history that persists, so a recurring problem or an overdue statutory task is visible rather than lost in a chat group or a spreadsheet tab.
- Unlimited Reporters on every plan — the people who spot a fault are never a per-seat charge, so reporting can cover the whole site from day one.
Fixray supports the record-keeping SFG20-aligned maintenance requires; full SFG20 task-code mapping is on our roadmap, and the cycle-tracking, assignment, and evidence shape is in production today. It does not replace the SFG20 schedule library, and it does not replace a competent person — your responsible person still signs off.
SFG20 delivery shouldn't be priced per person
Most maintenance software is priced per user. That is an awkward shape for planned maintenance: the people who notice a fault — housekeepers, duty managers, front-of-house, a contractor on site for one afternoon — far outnumber the people who fix it, so the bill and the coverage you actually want pull in opposite directions.
Fixray never charges per seat. Reporters are unlimited on every plan, including the free Log tier, so the person who spots the propped-open fire door or the dripping tap can log it without a budget conversation happening first.
The scoped detail, so you can check it against the pricing page: Log includes 2 Managers and 2 Fixers per site; Track and Operate include unlimited Managers and Fixers. Every plan is priced per site, not per user.
MaintainX, Limble and UpKeep all price per licensed user. That means their bill scales with the size of your team, where Fixray's scales with the number of sites you run — worth pricing both ways against your own headcount.
Competitor pricing models accurate as of MaintainX July 2026; Limble and UpKeep April 2026.
SFG20 questions
- What does SFG20 stand for?
- SFG stands for Services and Facilities Group, according to BESA's own SFG20 FAQs. The 20 is the number BESA — the Building Engineering Services Association, which publishes SFG20 — gave the standard, as it numbers each standard it develops. BESA created SFG20 in 1990, and today it is the recognised UK standard library of planned preventive maintenance task schedules.
- Is SFG20 free?
- No. SFG20 is a subscription product from BESA — you licence access to the schedule library and its software, and it is kept current as regulations change. BESA says fees vary with the size of the business and the level of product, and BESA members get a discount. Fixray is separate: it is a maintenance system where the SFG20-aligned tasks you plan get scheduled, assigned, completed, and evidenced. Fixray's Log tier is free forever, with unlimited Reporters and 2 Managers and 2 Fixers per site.
- Can I download SFG20 as a free PDF?
- Not the schedule library itself. BESA sells SFG20 on subscription, and its own site says the standard is accessed exclusively through its Facilities-iQ platform, where the schedules are kept current — BESA reports over 700 schedule updates a year. A PDF passed around outside a subscription is a snapshot that won't receive those updates. A subscription gets you the maintained library, plus Facilities-iQ tools to tailor schedules to your own sites. It does not do the work for you: the tasks still have to be scheduled, assigned, completed and evidenced, which is what the rest of this page covers.
- How often should SFG20 maintenance be carried out?
- It depends on the task. Each SFG20 schedule sets its own frequency — some checks are daily or weekly, others monthly, quarterly, or annual — based on the asset and the risk it carries. The value of a maintenance system is turning those varied cadences into recurring jobs that come due automatically, so nothing is missed.
- Does Fixray replace SFG20?
- No. SFG20 is the standard that defines the tasks; Fixray is the execution layer that helps you deliver them — recurring scheduling, assignment, completion evidence and, on Track and Operate, a per-asset audit trail. You keep your SFG20 schedules and run the work through Fixray. Fixray makes no claim of SFG20 certification, licensing, or endorsement.
- Is SFG20 mandatory?
- Not by law — no UK statute requires you to use SFG20. It is frequently mandatory in practice for a different reason: contracts, insurers, and client specifications routinely ask for SFG20-aligned maintenance, so for many operators it is a commercial requirement even though it is not a legal one. The underlying statutory duties to maintain your assets and evidence it apply either way.
- What is the difference between SFG20 and statutory maintenance?
- Statutory maintenance is the work the law requires — the duties under legislation such as the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005, and the Building Safety Act 2022. SFG20 is a specification that tells you what that work looks like task by task, and flags the statutory items in red. So statutory maintenance is the obligation; SFG20 is the widely recognised method for meeting it and showing you did.
- Do I have to pay for every person who reports a fault?
- Not with Fixray. Reporters are unlimited on every plan, including the free Log tier, so the housekeepers, duty managers, and front-of-house staff who spot the faults are never a per-seat charge. Log includes 2 Managers and 2 Fixers per site; Track and Operate include unlimited Managers and Fixers. Every plan is priced per site, not per user — which matters for planned maintenance, because the people who notice problems always outnumber the people who fix them.