Defence work used to be about the finished part. Now it is also about the machine that cut it. If a prime cannot see a clean maintenance trail on the equipment, they will find another supplier who can show them one.
What they will ask to see
- Servicing schedule per machine, with dates, engineer names, and the parts touched.
- Calibration certificates that trace back to a UKAS-accredited standard, not “we did it in-house”.
- A list of any interventions in the last twelve months that could have affected geometry, with the ballbar or laser report attached.
- Fluid management records if the parts are corrosion-sensitive.
What good looks like
The customers who breeze through these audits share three habits:
- One logbook per machine, next to the machine, filled in on the day, not the week after.
- Service reports scanned to a shared drive within 48 hours of the engineer's visit.
- An annual review meeting where the maintenance history is read alongside the production log. If a scrap spike lines up with an unrecorded service call, you find it there, not in an audit.
None of this is expensive. It is just a decision to write things down at the time. On a defence contract, that decision is what keeps you on the list.
