What is a CAFM System?
CAFM (computer-aided facilities management) software helps FM teams manage maintenance, assets, and workspace. This guide explains what a CAFM system does, what it's used for, and where it stops.
In short
A CAFM (computer-aided facilities management) system is software that helps facilities teams plan, manage, and record maintenance, assets, and building services. It typically handles work orders, planned maintenance schedules, asset registers, and reporting in one place.
What a CAFM system does
A CAFM system is the operational backbone of a maintenance team. It schedules and tracks planned preventive maintenance, logs and routes reactive jobs, holds the asset register, manages contractors, and produces the reports and compliance records management needs. By centralising work management, it replaces spreadsheets, paper job sheets, and disconnected diaries with a single auditable system.
- Planned maintenance (PPM) scheduling, often built from SFG20
- Reactive work order management and helpdesk
- Asset registers and maintenance history
- Contractor and SLA management
- Compliance reporting and audit trails
How CAFM relates to PPM and O&M data
A CAFM system is where PPM schedules live as recurring work orders, often loaded from an SFG20 library. It records that maintenance happened and stores the resulting history. What it generally does not do well is hold and surface the deep technical content of the O&M manuals — the manufacturer instructions, drawings, and specifications an engineer needs to actually carry out a task. CAFM tells you a job is due and records that it was done; the O&M documentation tells you how to do it.
Where CAFM stops
CAFM is excellent at managing work and assets but is not designed to be a searchable technical knowledge base. When an engineer on a job needs a specific setting, an isolation point, or a wiring detail, that information sits in O&M PDFs that the CAFM system may link to but cannot search in plain language. This is the gap an AI document assistant fills: it sits alongside the CAFM system and makes the underlying O&M library instantly queryable, so the engineer gets the answer without leaving the job to dig through folders.
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Sources
The regulatory positions on this page come from the following primary sources. Where guidance and legislation differ, the legislation governs — always confirm the requirements that apply to your own site and jurisdiction.
Frequently asked questions
What does CAFM stand for?
What is the difference between CAFM and a CMMS?
Does a CAFM system replace O&M manuals?
Add searchable O&M knowledge alongside your CAFM
PM Assist complements your CAFM system by making the O&M documentation behind every asset instantly searchable — so engineers get the technical answer on the job.
- Upload and organise building documentation
- AI-powered search across all your manuals
- Source-cited answers for every query
- Team collaboration and access control
- No credit card required to start