Seymour,
I understand your point of view, but it is not viable to keep increasing the resources for the department as the assset base grows. Our asset size has grown 80% in 6 years, the hospital has also grown. All NHS Hospital can expect their medical equipment asset size to increase by approx 100% in the next 10 - 15 years.
With standard Planned Preventive Maintenance some advantages are:
Increased component life-cycle. Reduced equipment or process failures, and some studies show a 12-18% savings over reactive maintenance methods (Fix it when its broke).
The Disadvantages are failures will still occur,
It is Labour intensive, and performance of unnecessary maintenance is carried out.
With Reliability Centered Maintenance a process is used to determine the maintenance requirements of any device based on its operating context.
The maintenance plan is based upon reliability criteria with priority given to the most critical High risk devices. We determine what types of failures are likely to occur. Focus on preventing failures whose consequences are likely to be a serious risk. This emphasises the use of predictive maintenance practices and utilises previous aspects of reactive and preventive maintenance concepts, in concert with root cause analysis of component/device/system failure.
Careful analysis of failures and effects can identify effective maintenance tasks or alternative strategies. These changes can be integrated into the existing maintenance program.
This can be the most efficient maintenance program. (when done properly)
(With regard to resource and risk management) It lowers costs by eliminating unnecessary maintenance, and minimises frequency of maintenance.

There is still the reduced chance of sudden equipment failure. We are now able to focus maintenance activities on critical devices/components resulting in increased reliability.
It incorporates database analysis and can have significant startup cost, (training, equipment, etc). Unfortunately the savings potential is not readily seen by some senior management and some departments are unable to operate this type of system because their database is not up to the job, they do not have the manpower, training or test equipment. We are moving towards reliability centered maintenance because it is the most efficient way (in my opinion) to set up a maintenance program.
With regard to your point made about legal argument. As long as you are able to present a viable argument in court, you are on solid ground.
This is not about 'not doing maintenence', but 'improving maintenance' practice.
