What is the key characteristic of corrective maintenance?

The key characteristic of corrective maintenance lies in its primary focus on addressing and resolving equipment failures after they occur. This type of maintenance is implemented to restore equipment to operational condition following a breakdown or malfunction. It aims to fix issues as they arise, ensuring that the system continues to function effectively.

While other forms of maintenance, such as preventive maintenance, concentrate on preventing failures before they happen or scheduling maintenance tasks at regular intervals, corrective maintenance is specifically reactive in nature. This makes it crucial for ensuring reliability in water distribution systems, as it directly deals with unexpected breakdowns that can disrupt service and operations.

Continuous monitoring of systems can be associated with different maintenance strategies such as predictive maintenance, which seeks to identify potential failures before they happen, but it is not a defining feature of corrective maintenance. Therefore, the focus on addressing and rectifying existing equipment failures distinctly sets corrective maintenance apart from other maintenance approaches.