Quick answer
A planned maintenance contract is an agreed schedule of service visits for your industrial doors and loading bay equipment, where each door is inspected, adjusted, lubricated and safety-tested, with worn parts identified before they fail and a written record left for every door. Most sites need at least one service a year per door, more for busy doors. Guide price £85 to £175 ex VAT per door per visit.
Why plan door maintenance?
Planned maintenance keeps industrial doors safe, reliable and in efficient working order, which is what the law requires of employers and occupiers. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and PUWER 1998 in England, Wales and Scotland, and their Northern Ireland equivalents, require doors and work equipment to be maintained, and for powered doors that includes their safety devices.
The law does not set a fixed interval. The duty is to keep the door safe and working, and door industry guidance treats at least one service every twelve months as the minimum, with more frequent visits for doors that cycle heavily, sit in harsh or corrosive environments, or where the manufacturer's manual says so. A planned contract turns that duty into a schedule that happens without anyone having to remember it. Our guide to industrial door servicing frequency explains how intervals are set and what the manufacturer's manual typically asks for.
What happens on a service visit?
Each door is taken out of use briefly while the engineer works through a set checklist:
- Inspect the curtain, panels or leaves, guides, tracks and fixings for damage, wear and corrosion.
- Check springs, cables, drums, rollers and hinges; adjust spring tension and balance where needed.
- Lubricate moving parts as the manufacturer specifies.
- Check the motor, brake, limits, manual override and control panel.
- Test safety edges, photocells, light curtains and fall-protection devices, and carry out force tests where the door closes under power.
- Run the door through repeated cycles and confirm it operates smoothly and safely.
- Record findings, photographs and recommendations.
Loading bay equipment gets the same treatment: levellers, shelters, bumpers, lights and interlocks are inspected and tested as part of the same visit.
How often should each door be serviced?
Frequency should match how hard each door works. As a rule of thumb, a door opening a few times a day can be serviced annually, a busy loading door every six months, and a high-speed door logging thousands of cycles a week more often still, using its cycle counter to set the interval. Doors in food plants, coastal sites, chemical environments or wash-down areas may need extra visits because of corrosion.
Fire shutters follow their own regime under fire safety law and the fire risk assessment, typically at least annually and often six-monthly, with a drop test each time; our fire shutter servicing covers that. We agree the schedule door by door when we set up the contract, so you are not paying for visits a quiet door does not need, while the hardest-working doors get the attention their cycle counts call for.
What records do you provide?
After each visit you receive a written report for every door: its location, type and make, what was checked, the results of safety and force tests, the defects found and the action recommended. Defects are ranked so you can see at a glance what is urgent, what should be planned and what can wait. Remedial work is quoted separately before anything chargeable is done.
Those records matter. They show your maintenance duty is being met, help insurers and auditors, and give engineers a history to work from when diagnosing faults. Keeping a log for each door is industry practice, and we can keep an asset register of every door on your site so that new sites, new doors and changes are added as they happen.
What does a maintenance contract cost?
Our guide price is £85 to £175 ex VAT per door per visit, depending on door type, size, complexity and how many doors are on site. Larger sites usually cost less per door because travel and set-up are shared. Fire shutter services with a drop test are priced separately at £125 to £265 per shutter. Parts and remedial repairs are quoted separately after each visit.
Servicing visits are chargeable, as are any repair call-outs between services, but a well-run maintenance schedule usually reduces the number of breakdowns. If a door does fail, our industrial door repairs service picks it up, with the service history already on file.
At a glance
- Frequency
- Annual, six-monthly or quarterly per door, set by use and the manufacturer's instructions
- Mechanical checks
- Springs, cables, drums, rollers, hinges, guides, tracks, curtain or panels and fixings
- Drive checks
- Motor, gearbox, brake, limits, manual override and control panel
- Safety checks
- Safety edges, photocells, light curtains, fall-protection devices and force tests
- Loading bays
- Dock levellers, shelters, bumpers, traffic lights and interlocks
- Records
- Written service report per door, with defects ranked and quotes for remedial work
- Coverage
- Most makes of door and loading bay equipment, subject to parts availability
Guide prices
| Item | Guide price (ex VAT) |
|---|---|
| Planned maintenance, per door per visit | £85 – £175 |
| Fire shutter service with drop test, per shutter | £125 – £265 |
Guide prices excluding VAT, which is added at the current rate where it applies. The visit price is agreed before we attend, and any repair is quoted before we carry it out.
What we check on a visit
- Number, location, type and make of each door and item of loading equipment
- Daily cycles and operating environment for each door
- Manufacturer's maintenance instructions where available
- Existing service records and known defects
- Access arrangements, working hours and out-of-hours needs
- Fire shutters and their fire risk assessment requirements
Planned maintenance contracts: frequently asked questions
Is industrial door servicing a legal requirement?
The law requires doors and work equipment to be maintained in efficient working order and good repair, and powered doors to have working safety features. It does not set a fixed interval, but at least one service a year is industry practice, with more for busy doors. Records of servicing show the duty is being met.
Do you service doors you did not install?
Yes. We service most makes of industrial door and loading bay equipment. On the first visit we record each door's details and condition so later services, repairs and parts orders are straightforward.
Are repairs included in the contract price?
The contract price covers the scheduled service visits. Parts and remedial repairs are quoted separately after each visit, so you decide what is done and when. Repair call-outs between services are also chargeable.
Can services be done outside working hours?
Yes. Servicing takes each door out of use for a short time, so many sites prefer early mornings, evenings or weekends. Out-of-hours visits can be arranged, and any extra cost is set out in the contract.
Areas we cover for planned maintenance contracts
We cover England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; islands and remote sites by arrangement. Choose your area for local details and the law that applies there.
England
- Bedfordshire
- Berkshire
- Bristol
- Buckinghamshire
- Cambridgeshire
- Cheshire
- Cornwall
- County Durham
- Cumbria
- Derbyshire
- Devon
- Dorset
- East Riding of Yorkshire
- East Sussex
- Essex
- Gloucestershire
- Greater London
- Greater Manchester
- Hampshire
- Herefordshire
- Hertfordshire
- Isle of Wight
- Kent
- Lancashire
- Leicestershire
- Lincolnshire
- Merseyside
- Norfolk
- North Yorkshire
- Northamptonshire
- Northumberland
- Nottinghamshire
- Oxfordshire
- Rutland
- Shropshire
- Somerset
- South Yorkshire
- Staffordshire
- Suffolk
- Surrey
- Tyne and Wear
- Warwickshire
- West Midlands
- West Sussex
- West Yorkshire
- Wiltshire
- Worcestershire
Wales
Scotland
- Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire
- Angus and Dundee
- Argyll and Bute
- Ayrshire
- Dumfries and Galloway
- Edinburgh and the Lothians
- Fife
- Forth Valley
- Glasgow
- Highlands and Islands
- Lanarkshire
- Perth and Kinross
- Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire
- Scottish Borders
Northern Ireland
Last updated 19 October 2026.