Priorities only work if everyone uses them the same way. This guide defines exactly what each level means in MaintIQ so a P2 from the morning shift means the same thing to the closing supervisor.
P1 — Critical / Safety
Drop everything. Fix now.
- Risk to life or safety (gas leak, electrical fault, water on floor near outlets).
- Total loss of a revenue-critical system during operating hours (no hot water at a hotel check-in, walk-in cooler failure at a restaurant).
- Environmental release.
Target response: start within 15 minutes. Notification: alerts the on-call manager via push and email immediately.
P2 — Urgent
Address before end of shift. Operations are degraded but not stopped.
- One of two redundant systems is down.
- Equipment is failing intermittently.
- A safety device is bypassed pending repair.
Target response: start within 4 hours. Notification: posts to the facility's notification channel.
P3 — Standard
Address within the week. Normal corrective maintenance.
- Worn parts that have not failed yet.
- Cosmetic damage that affects guest experience.
- Minor leaks that are caught in a pan.
Target response: start within 7 days. Notification: appears in the daily digest email.
P4 — Backlog
Plan for the next scheduled downtime.
- Improvements, not failures.
- Painting, tidying, signage updates.
- Documentation gaps.
Target response: scheduled to a future window. Notification: none — it lives in the work-order list.
Setting and changing priority
When you create a work order, the priority field is required. You can change it later — but the change is logged in History with the user, old value, new value, and reason.
Escalation rules
Each priority has a breach time set in Admin → Cadences → Work order SLAs. If a P1 is still untouched after 15 minutes, MaintIQ escalates to the next role in the on-call chain. Admins can customise the chain per facility.