Planned maintenance and breakdown response are two different purchases. How to write an AMC that names the spare parts, holds them inside the country, and is priced against what a day of downtime really costs you.
Walk into the equipment store of most district hospitals in Bangladesh and you will find machines under dust sheets. Not antiques: a three year old electric bed with a dead actuator, a centrifuge with a failed lid interlock, a suction unit waiting on a diaphragm. Almost none of them are beyond repair. They are out of service because nobody signed a maintenance agreement that named the part, held it inside the country, and put an engineer on a bus.
Two different services get bundled under one three letter abbreviation and then argued about at renewal. Planned preventive maintenance is scheduled work carried out whether or not anything is wrong: inspection, measurement, cleaning, replacement of wear items before they fail, and a written record of readings. Breakdown response is what happens when the machine stops. A contract that covers one and not the other is not automatically a bad contract, but you should know which one you have signed.
The commercial logic differs too. Breakdown response is an option on the supplier's engineer time, priced according to how quickly you want that option exercised. When a quotation looks unusually low, read the response clause before congratulating yourself.
The test of a planned visit is the report. A sheet of ticks tells you nothing. A sheet of measured values tells you whether a machine is drifting, and drift is the only early warning you get.
Manufacturers publish intervals based on assumed duty in a controlled environment. Where equipment counts cycles, running hours or throughput, set the interval on the counter instead. Shorten it for anything installed in a dusty, humid or coastal location: equipment near the sea in Chattogram or Cox's Bazar corrodes on a different timetable to equipment in Baridhara.
Almost everything else in a maintenance agreement is negotiable. Whether spare parts are included, and whether they sit in a warehouse in Bangladesh or on another continent, is what determines how many days a year the machine works.
The largest single component of downtime here is neither diagnosis nor labour. It is the interval between identifying a part and getting it cleared. Even when the factory ships on the day you ask, freight, clearance and any import permission add weeks.
So make local stock a contract term rather than a hope. Agree a list of critical spares to be held in Bangladesh for the life of the agreement, state the quantity, and reserve the right to inspect the stock. Choose the list by consequence rather than by frequency: the parts that stop the machine dead, not the parts that fail most often. For an electric ICU bed that means actuators, hand controls and the control box. For a theatre lamp, the LED module and the arm friction assembly. For a steam steriliser, the door gasket, safety valve and pressure sensor. For a centrifuge, the lid interlock and the motor assembly.
Maintenance keeps a machine running. Calibration tells you whether the number on the display is true. A steriliser can complete every cycle, print a satisfactory chart and still be holding below the temperature it reports. Nothing downstream will tell you.
Insist on traceability. A calibration certificate is worth having only if it names the reference instrument, states the traceability chain up to a national or international standard, and states the measurement uncertainty. In Bangladesh that chain normally runs through a laboratory accredited to ISO/IEC 17025 by the Bangladesh Accreditation Board or an equivalent body abroad. A certificate carrying a logo, a date and no uncertainty figure is a receipt, not a calibration.
Ask for as-found as well as as-left values. As-left tells you the instrument is correct today. As-found tells you whether the last twelve months of results were valid. A laboratory that reports only as-left is quietly removing your ability to investigate.
| Equipment | What gets calibrated | Why the reading matters |
|---|---|---|
| Steam steriliser | Chamber temperature and pressure sensors, cycle timer | A cycle that never reached temperature was never a sterilising cycle, and the printout will not say so |
| Laboratory incubator and water bath | Temperature at the working position, plus the gradient across the chamber | The spread across a chamber is often wider than the offset at the setpoint, and it moves results |
| Centrifuge | Rotational speed and timer | Protocols are written in relative centrifugal force, so a speed error changes the sample without changing the display |
| Dialysis chair with integrated weighing | Weighing platform against certified masses | Fluid removal is prescribed from weight, so an uncorrected scale error becomes a clinical error every session |
| Radiotherapy dosimetry equipment | Chambers and electrometers against a secondary standard | Every measurement downstream in the treatment chain inherits the error |
Most maintenance negotiations here are conducted as though the contract price is the only number in play. It is the smaller number. Do this arithmetic once, for your two or three busiest machines, and the conversation changes.
The same arithmetic tells you which machines deserve a contract at all. A manual ward bed does not. A single machine that a whole department queues for does, and so does anything whose failure stops a list rather than slowing it.
| Clause | Specify this | Refuse this |
|---|---|---|
| Response | Hours from the call being logged to an engineer on site, with the logging channel named and a reference number issued for every call | As soon as possible, or a clock that only starts when the supplier chooses to acknowledge |
| Restoration | A separate maximum time to return the machine to service, and a stated consequence if it is exceeded | A response guarantee with no restoration obligation attached to it |
| Preventive visits | A stated number per year against a published schedule, with a remedy for missed visits | Visits at the supplier's discretion |
| Reporting | A signed report carrying measured values, left on site at every visit | A report to follow by email, which frequently does not |
| Spares | Named critical spares held in Bangladesh, quantities stated, with a right of inspection | Parts available on request |
| Renewal | The price mechanism, and any ceiling, agreed at signature | Renewal price to be discussed nearer the time |