SFG20 Red, Amber, Green and Pink Tasks

SFG20 colour-codes maintenance by criticality: red (statutory), pink (mandatory), amber (optimal) and green (discretionary). How each colour affects PPM and compliance.

Every task in an SFG20 schedule carries a colour code. Facilities managers use those colours to decide what must happen for legal compliance, what the contract or sector demands, what keeps plant reliable, and what can wait when budgets tighten. Getting the classification wrong is one of the fastest routes to an audit finding.

If you are new to the standard, start with what SFG20 is before diving into the task colours.

What are SFG20 task colours?

SFG20 applies three standard schedule colours to each maintenance item:

• Red marks work that supports legal compliance for the linked duty
• Amber marks optimal best-practice maintenance
• Green marks discretionary tasks that support condition and lifespan without the same compliance weight

Pink is not a base schedule colour. Teams add it when tailoring a regime in Facilities-iQ to mark organisation- or sector-specific requirements, such as a client contract or sector rule that goes beyond the red set.

The colours give duty-holders and contractors a shared priority system. When you build a regime from SFG20 schedules, the colour coding travels with each task into your PPM programme.

Red tasks: legal compliance work you must evidence

Red tasks are the ones auditors ask about first. They connect to legislation or regulations covering areas such as fire safety, water hygiene, gas installations, electrical systems and lifting equipment.

For a facilities manager, red tasks need four things in place:

• A defined frequency from the SFG20 schedule (or your risk-assessed variation)
• A named owner, in-house or contracted
• Completion records with dates
• Evidence attached to the asset or site record

Missing a red task is not the same as deferring an amber service. Whether it creates a compliance gap depends on the specific task and its underlying legal requirement, but red work is always the first place auditors look for planned completion and evidence. That is why tender documents and client specifications often require contractors to run SFG20 regimes with red tasks clearly flagged.

Pink tasks: mandatory for the contract or sector

Pink tasks sit between statute and best practice. They are not required by law in the same way as red tasks, but they are treated as mandatory for the organisation: contractual obligations, sector standards, or operational rules that the client or duty-holder has decided must not slip.

Examples include maintenance the FM contract specifies beyond the statutory set, or checks a trust or landlord requires across every site even where the law is quieter. In Facilities-iQ, teams with the right subscription can raise a non-statutory task to pink so it carries that weight in the regime.

For contractors, pink tasks are often where client audits bite after red. Completing the statutory work but missing contract-critical pink items still puts the mobilisation and the relationship at risk.

Amber tasks: optimal maintenance for reliability

Amber tasks represent best-practice maintenance that keeps equipment efficient and available but is not directly statutory. Ignoring amber work does not usually trigger a regulatory breach, but it does increase breakdown risk and operating cost.

Teams under budget pressure sometimes cut amber tasks first. That is a legitimate operational decision if it is documented and the risk is understood. The mistake is cutting amber work without recording the decision, then facing an equipment failure that was foreseeable.

A balanced PPM programme runs red and pink tasks without exception and schedules amber tasks according to asset criticality and the operating context of each site.

Green tasks: discretionary maintenance

Green tasks cover lower-criticality work that supports asset condition over the long term. They matter for lifecycle planning and capital forecasting, but they rarely appear in a statutory audit.

Some organisations strip green tasks from mobilisation to reduce initial workload, then add them back once red, pink and amber programmes are stable. SFG20 gives you the option because the standard covers the full maintenance spectrum, not just compliance minima.

How teams use the colours in practice

On a multi-site portfolio, the colour system helps you report consistently. A client dashboard might show red and pink completion rates across every building, amber backlog as a reliability indicator, and green tasks as a planning horizon.

Contractors mobilising onto an SFG20 contract typically map client assets to schedules in Facilities-iQ, export the regime, and load red and pink tasks into the CAFM or compliance platform first. Mobilisation tools such as SFG20 Mobiliser speed up asset mapping, but the colour logic stays the same whether mapping is manual or automated.

Software that syncs SFG20 regimes can preserve the Red, Pink, Amber and Green classification in live work orders. That stops teams re-interpreting criticality in a spreadsheet after import.

Linking colours to your PPM programme

The colour code only works if it survives the journey from SFG20 content to completed work on site. Common failure points include:

• Importing schedules without the criticality field
• Merging red, pink and amber tasks into a generic "PPM" bucket
• Recording completion without linking evidence to the asset
• Not updating the regime when SFG20 publishes schedule revisions

CalmCompliance syncs SFG20 regimes with Red, Pink, Amber and Green classification intact, so statutory and mandatory tasks stay visible in the PPM calendar. Completions pass back to SFG20 and the evidence stays on the asset record. See the SFG20 software integration for how that works, or facilities compliance software for the wider statutory picture across a portfolio.

When classifications change

BESA updates SFG20 schedules when legislation or British Standards change. A task that was amber can become red if the regulatory landscape shifts. Subscribers receive updated content through Facilities-iQ, but your local regime and PPM programme need a review process to pick up those changes. Pink ratings you set for contractual reasons also need a review when the contract or sector rulebook changes.

Build a quarterly check: compare your live regime against the current SFG20 library, confirm red and pink tasks still match your asset register and client specification, and update frequencies where your risk assessment supports a justified variation.

The colour system is simple on the surface. Red means legal, pink means mandatory for the organisation or contract, amber means optimal, green means discretionary. The discipline is keeping that logic alive in the work your teams actually perform and the records they produce afterwards.