I see this week's question about properly installed leans a lot more towards "yes" than last week regarding maintenance. Do most believe it might be because the burden (for properly installed) is less on the owner and more on the contractor/designer? Just thought I would throw that out there.

My guess is that it's something (install) you do once, while maintenance is "forever after".
Install is usually more planned, while maintenance is "until it breaks".
It's more difficult to cut costs at installation if you need to install something, while maintenance gets cut easily.

New installation involves months if not years of plannings and investment of dollars. Drawings are created and reviewed by independent teams. Scope of works are created from the drawings and reviewed by affected parties. Alternatives are evaluated, drawings are re done, scopes are tweaked. finally bids are let. A project/construction manager compare the work done to the scope, variances are addressed. Finally everything goes on-line.

Maintenance often involves just giving someone a screwdriver and a wrench and telling them to get production back up as fast as possible.

One thing I have seen everywhere I have worked, though, is that maintenance will "reinstall" things to a much different standard than the original installation. Where I am right now I'm running into issues such as motors, as one example, that were upsized without the associated starters, overloads, and cables being changed as well. I've also frequently run into circumstances where I have documentation for the initial industrial plant, but very little documentation for the various upgrades, additions and subtractions that have been done through the years.

We have very good standards such as NEC for installation requirements. I can pretty easily demonstrate compliance with that document. Not so for maintenance.

This is similar to various "safety inspections". It is very simple to inspect things, but much harder to inspect activities.