The language of facility management

CAFM

Computer-Aided Facility Management

CAFM stands for Computer-Aided Facility Management. It is software that gives a facilities team one system of record for its buildings: the asset register, planned and reactive maintenance, work orders, contractors, space, and compliance evidence. The point of a CAFM system is that everything about a property portfolio lives in one place instead of across spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups and a filing cabinet.

CMMS

Computerised Maintenance Management System

CMMS stands for Computerised Maintenance Management System. It is software built to manage the maintenance of physical assets: what you own, what condition it is in, what work is due, who did it, and what parts it consumed. A CMMS is maintenance-first by design: it is deliberately narrower than a CAFM or IWMS platform.

PPM

Planned Preventive Maintenance

PPM stands for Planned Preventive Maintenance. It is maintenance carried out on a schedule to keep equipment working, rather than in response to something breaking. A PPM schedule sets out what gets serviced, how often, by whom, and against which standard, and in most facility contracts it is the work the client is actually paying for.

Work Order

A work order is the instruction to carry out a specific piece of work, and the record of what happened when it was carried out. In facility management it is the basic unit of everything: the asset it relates to, who raised it, who did it, how long it took, what it cost, and whether it met the service level agreed with the client.

Hard FM & Soft FM

Hard FM covers the physical building and its engineering systems: the things that would still be there if everyone left. Soft FM covers the services delivered to the people using the building. The distinction matters because the two are contracted, priced, measured and staffed in completely different ways.

Asset Tagging

Asset tagging is the practice of attaching a unique, scannable identifier to each piece of equipment so that its history, documentation and maintenance schedule can be retrieved on the spot. It is the groundwork for every other part of a CAFM or CMMS deployment: without reliable tags, the asset register is a guess.

CAFM Full Form

Computer-Aided Facility Management

The full form of CAFM is Computer-Aided Facility Management. It refers to software that helps an organisation plan, run and record the upkeep of its buildings: the assets inside them, the maintenance carried out on them, the space they provide and the services delivered in them. You will also see it written as Computer-Aided Facilities Management; both versions mean the same thing.

CAFM Meaning

Computer-Aided Facility Management

In practice, CAFM means having one system that every request, job, inspection and asset record passes through. For a UAE property owner or FM team, the meaning is less about the software than about the change it brings: work stops living in phone calls, WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets, and every job gets a timestamp, an owner and an evidence trail that can be checked later.

CAFM System

Computer-Aided Facility Management

A CAFM system is the software platform an FM operation runs on: a set of connected modules built around a shared asset register, used by managers through a web application and by technicians on mobile. Viewed as a system, it is a database of buildings and equipment, a workflow engine that turns requests and schedules into jobs, and a reporting layer that shows whether the work met the contract.

CMMS Meaning

Computerised Maintenance Management System

The full form of CMMS is Computerised Maintenance Management System, also spelled Computerized. In practice, CMMS means running maintenance from a system rather than from memory and paper: every asset has a record, every job is logged against it, preventive work is scheduled automatically, and the maintenance team can show what was done, when and at what cost.

SLA

Service Level Agreement

An SLA (Service Level Agreement) in facility management is the part of an FM contract that defines how quickly and how well the service provider must respond to and resolve issues, usually by priority level, and what happens when it does not. It turns a general expectation such as prompt repairs into measurable targets that can be tracked job by job.

SFG20

SFG20 is the UK industry standard library of planned maintenance schedules for buildings, created in 1990 by the Building Engineering Services Association (BESA). For each asset type it sets out which maintenance tasks to carry out, how often, and with what skills, so owners and contractors can build PPM regimes from a recognised baseline instead of writing them from scratch.

PPM Full Form

Planned Preventive Maintenance

The full form of PPM in maintenance is Planned Preventive Maintenance, often written Planned Preventative Maintenance in UK usage. It means servicing equipment on a fixed schedule, before it fails, rather than waiting for a breakdown. In facility management contracts across the UAE and Saudi Arabia, PPM is the scheduled side of the work, as opposed to reactive call-outs.

CMMS Full Form

Computerised Maintenance Management System

The full form of CMMS is Computerised Maintenance Management System, spelled Computerized in American English. It names software that records an organisation's equipment, schedules its preventive maintenance, manages repair work orders and spare parts, and keeps the maintenance history of each asset.

CMMS Software

Computerised Maintenance Management System

CMMS software is a computerised maintenance management system delivered as an application: a database of equipment combined with tools to schedule preventive maintenance, raise and close work orders, manage spare parts and report on maintenance performance. CMMS programs are bought by teams whose main job is keeping equipment running, from factories and utilities to hospital engineering departments and maintenance contractors.

IWMS

Integrated Workplace Management System

IWMS stands for Integrated Workplace Management System. It is enterprise software that brings real estate and lease management, space and occupancy, facilities and maintenance, capital projects and sustainability onto one platform with one database. An IWMS is broader than a CAFM system: it manages the property portfolio as well as the buildings in it.

IFM

Integrated Facilities Management

Integrated facilities management (IFM) is a contracting model in which one provider delivers most or all of a property's hard and soft services under a single contract, with one management team and one set of performance measures. Instead of the owner managing separate vendors for maintenance, cleaning, security and landscaping, the IFM provider manages them and is accountable for the result.

BMS

Building Management System

A building management system (BMS) is the computer-based control system that monitors and runs a building's mechanical and electrical plant in real time: chillers, air handling units, pumps, lighting, power and other services. It is also called a building automation system (BAS). A BMS controls the equipment; a CAFM system manages the maintenance work done on it.

MTTR

Mean Time to Repair

MTTR stands for mean time to repair: the average time it takes to fix a failed asset and return it to service. It is calculated by dividing the total repair time in a period by the number of repairs. In facility management, MTTR is one of the main measures of how quickly corrective work orders are resolved.

Reactive Maintenance

Reactive maintenance is repair work carried out after equipment has failed or a fault has been reported, rather than on a schedule. It is also called breakdown maintenance and, in its deliberate form, run-to-failure. Every building needs some reactive work, but a maintenance regime that relies on it pays more per job and lets occupants find the faults first.

Predictive maintenance

Predictive maintenance is a strategy in which maintenance is triggered by evidence that an asset is starting to degrade, rather than by a fixed calendar or by a breakdown. Condition data such as vibration, temperature, current draw, run hours and fault history is monitored, and work is planned for the window between the first sign of a problem and actual failure.

MTBF

Mean Time Between Failures

MTBF stands for mean time between failures: the average time a repairable asset runs between one failure and the next. It is calculated by dividing the total operating time in a period by the number of failures in that period. A higher MTBF means the asset fails less often.

EAM

Enterprise Asset Management

EAM stands for enterprise asset management. It is the practice, and the software, for managing an organisation's physical assets across their whole life: planning and acquisition, installation, operation and maintenance, and finally renewal or disposal. EAM software extends a maintenance system with asset costs, lifecycle planning and links to finance and procurement across many sites.

Facility condition assessment

FCA

A facility condition assessment, or FCA, is a structured survey of a building or portfolio that records each major asset, grades its physical condition, estimates its remaining useful life and costs the repairs and replacements it will need. The result is a prioritised list of work and a forecast of capital spending, usually over five to ten years.

Asset lifecycle management

Asset lifecycle management is the practice of managing a physical asset through every stage of its life, from planning and acquisition through installation, operation and maintenance to renewal or disposal, with the aim of getting the required performance at the lowest whole-life cost and acceptable risk.

CAFM operator

A CAFM operator is the person who runs the day-to-day work in a facility management team's CAFM system. They log incoming requests and complaints, raise work orders, assign them to technicians or subcontractors, follow them through to completion against the SLA, and keep the records and reports accurate.

First-time fix rate

FTFR

First-time fix rate, or FTFR, is the percentage of maintenance jobs that are resolved on the technician's first visit, without a return trip, a second work order or a repeat complaint about the same fault. It is one of the clearest measures of whether reactive maintenance is actually fixing problems or only responding to them.

Maintenance backlog

A maintenance backlog is all the maintenance work that has been identified and approved but not yet completed: open reactive jobs, overdue planned maintenance and repairs waiting for parts, access or budget. It is usually measured in labour hours or in weeks of the available crew's time, so it shows whether the team can keep up with the work coming in.

FM help desk

An FM help desk is the single point of contact where tenants, residents, occupants and staff report faults and request services in a building or portfolio. It logs each request, classifies it by location, fault and priority, turns it into a work order for the right team, and keeps the requester informed until the job is closed.