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Reading Comprehension items ask you to identify the author’s central claim and distinguish it from supporting details. The passage begins by asserting that preventive maintenance reduces unplanned outages by acting before failure. It contrasts this with deferred maintenance, which may look cheaper short-term but ultimately raises lifecycle costs due to collateral damage and overtime. The final sentence lists planning considerations—criticality, lead time, and staffing—as relevant factors, but they are supporting details, not the thesis. Option B correctly summarizes: preventive maintenance reduces unplanned outages and, considering lifecycle effects, is cost-effective overall. Option A contradicts the passage, which warns that deferral increases costs. Option C elevates one factor (technician availability) to the main point, which the passage does not do. Option D similarly overemphasizes parts lead time over criticality; the author mentions both among several considerations. The CAST requires extracting the gist and resisting distractors that focus on secondary details or oversimplify nuanced points.