Having an effective maintenance management system in place is critical for maintenance managers of tertiary educational institutions to ensure that maintenance expenditure is kept to a minimum. The development of an efficient maintenance management system is not an easy task and maintenance managers are often faced with the task of determining what is ‘best practice’ in their search for an effective maintenance management system.

The paper reports the findings of a doctoral study and presents what is considered to be best practice and how maintenance managers can evaluate their own maintenance management systems using a computerised benchmarking model.

The research indicated that the performance of tertiary educational institutions, in terms of maintenance management, is far below best practice. The conclusions drawn and recommendations made are extremely valuable for tertiary educational institutions to ensure that limited financial resources are used effectively.