CAFM stands for computer-aided facility management, and the acronym is doing a lot of work in a small space. What it names is a record: every asset with its location, its condition and its expected life; every space with how much of it is actually occupied; and every work order attached to the asset it belongs to. Everything a CAFM is sold on, the dashboards and the mobile app and the reporting, is derived from those three lists being kept properly rather than kept separately. This page sets out what the record has to hold before any of that means anything, the three questions a small estate actually buys it to answer, and where the free sheets on this site work each one from your own numbers with no account.
The CAFM meaning: what the letters stand for, and what they leave out
Computer-aided facility management. The phrase dates from the era when the alternative was a drawing board and a card index, which is why it emphasises the computer rather than the job. What it does not say is which job, and that is the part worth pinning down before you shop: a CAFM is the record of the estate, not the workflow of the maintenance team and not the booking system for the meeting rooms. Products sold under the acronym often include some of both, and there is nothing wrong with that, but the thing you are buying and the thing you will be unable to replace later is the record.
The three lists a CAFM system keeps
Assets, spaces and work orders, each with a state and a date, and each linked to the others. An asset has a location, a condition and an expected life. A space has an area and an occupancy. A work order belongs to an asset and has a status and a date it changed. That is the whole of it, and the test of a product is whether those three are genuinely one record or three tabs that share a login. Ask in a demo to see one asset with its space, its condition and its open work orders on a single screen. If that takes three screens, every figure below has to be rebuilt by hand each time somebody asks.
The three questions it exists to answer
How much of the space is used, what the estate costs to run, and whether the maintenance backlog is growing. All three are arithmetic on the record, and all three are worked by free sheets here. On the utilization sheet, 180 desks with 108 occupied is 60% utilization and 72 empty desks, and $168,000 of a $420,000 running cost is carried by desks nobody sits at. On the backlog sheet, 340 open work orders at 2.5 hours each is 850 hours against a three-technician capacity of 90 hours a week while 112.5 arrive: the backlog grows 22.5 hours every week, and no amount of prioritising fixes that.
What a spreadsheet does well, and what CAFM systems are actually for
The arithmetic. Utilization, cost per square foot, backlog hours and the sinking fund are all divisions, and a spreadsheet does divisions faultlessly, which is why the sheets on this site are free and always will be. What a spreadsheet does badly is the record underneath: more than one person cannot touch it without forking it, the history of a condition change does not survive the person who made it, and the link between an asset and its work orders is a lookup somebody maintains by hand. That is what a CAFM is actually for, and it is a good reason to work the figures first and buy second.
Questions people ask about cafm
What is CAFM software, and what does CAFM stand for?
Computer-aided facility management. It names software that keeps the estate as one record: assets with location, condition and expected life, spaces with their occupancy, and work orders against the asset they belong to. The acronym is older than most of the products sold under it and is used loosely, so it is worth asking any vendor which of the three lists they actually keep.
What is a CAFM system, in practice?
One record of the estate that several people can use at once, with the history of every change surviving the person who made it. In practice that means an asset register with condition and expected life, a space record with occupancy, and work orders linked to assets, rather than three spreadsheets and a shared drive.
Is CAFM the same as CMMS?
No, though they overlap and many products do both. A CMMS is built around the maintenance workflow: the work order, the technician, the schedule. A CAFM is built around the estate record: the asset, the space and their condition. If your pain is the backlog, look at maintenance software; if it is that nobody can say what you own or how much of the space is used, look at CAFM.
Do I need CAFM software before I can work these figures?
No, and that is the point of the free sheets here. Utilization, cost per square foot, the maintenance backlog and the asset sinking fund are arithmetic on numbers you already have. Working them first also tells you what to demand of any system you buy, because you will know which of the four it can actually produce.
What do vendors mean by CAFM solutions?
Usually the same three lists with a marketing noun in front of them. The acronym is older than most of the products sold under it and is used loosely, so a page offering CAFM solutions may mean the estate record, a maintenance system with a space module bolted on, or a booking tool. The way through it is to ignore the noun and ask which of the three records the product keeps properly: assets with condition and expected life, spaces with occupancy over time, and work orders attached to the asset they belong to.