What should a national oxygen plant maintenance contract cover?

What the service agreement should detail

In WHO's specification for oxygen generator plants (31 December 2024), maintenance should be conducted by a qualified party, and the manufacturer shall provide a comprehensive preventive maintenance schedule, including calibration requirements, at a clearly established frequency such as operating hours or months lapsed, and a list of all associated spares for each maintenance interval. WHO suggests a service level agreement with a qualified provider authorised by the equipment's manufacturer, which should detail:

• Terms and conditions, including the duration of the agreement.
• The level of responsibility, task by task and including sourcing: planned preventive maintenance with calibration; or preventive maintenance plus troubleshooting and curative maintenance; or troubleshooting and curative maintenance only.
• Costs itemised as labour, travel, lodging and all parts.
• Time to respond for remote support and for on-site intervention, and the time for critical spares to reach the point of intervention.
• Who bears responsibility for emergency oxygen supply if a stock-out or rupture occurs.
• Record keeping of all activities.

WHO adds that, in service contracts, the original manufacturer's certification of the trainers and the content and delivery of training should be agreed by all parties before the contract is signed. The Global Fund's asset handover checklist (28 May 2025) asks for the party responsible for scheduling service visits and for the frequency of service required based on hours of operation, and says that if the supplier does not adjust its schedule to the facility's operating plan, the costs of extra visits should be understood and included in the facility budget. Contract terms for a single plant are on what a medical gas maintenance contract covers.

When one contract covers many hospitals

Global Fund staffing guidance (11 April 2025) envisages a regional or national supervising engineer who oversees several oxygen plants and their operators. That engineer manages the service contract, liaises with suppliers, budgets for and orders spare parts, reviews the operators' daily reports and maintenance and repair logs, visits the hospitals and does the more complex maintenance, while hospital-specific operators handle daily operation; in all arrangements the operators' daily checklists should be checked by a qualified engineer.

Published tenders show how multi-site contracts are framed. A UNICEF request for proposals published on 20 December 2021 (LRFP 9171914) covered repairs and/or maintenance of the PSA plants at three hospitals in Zambia; it strongly advised bidders to visit all three sites and carry out a detailed assessment to inform their financial proposal, and came with terms of reference and a proposed list of spare parts to be replaced. In Spain, the Andalusian Health Service's technical specification for medical gases and their installations in the Cádiz province (EXPTE 1143/2023) covered the centres attached to the Cádiz provincial purchasing centre, committed the contractor to serve any new centre under the same conditions through a contract modification, made the preventive maintenance plan approved by the centres binding, and asked for a quarterly report to each hospital's technical maintenance services, giving the contractor web access to the centres' maintenance management system to close preventive work orders.

What goes wrong without it

PATH's analysis of PSA plant disrepair (November 2023) found that, of the 16 facilities that had outsourced maintenance, 5 had an active contract in good standing, 2 were behind on payments and 4 had reached the end of their contract without renewing; an active contract did not guarantee uptime either. PATH recommends exploring alternative ownership models and service-contracting mechanisms that fit facility contexts. In its 2021 COVID-19 report, the WHO Regional Office for Africa said that, with 26 oxygen plants not operational in Africa, its team had drawn up a protocol for upkeep, repair and maintenance.

Ultra Controlo

UltraCare, the Ultra Controlo programme for its own systems, covers preventive and corrective maintenance, original spare parts and emergency support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the ULTRAOX datasheet (2022, p. 6) says Ultra Controlo selects people in each country and trains technicians to care for its products. See what UltraCare is.