CAFM

CAFM (Computer-Aided Facility Management) studies the system category that supports facility processes: tickets, scheduling, space management, contracts and maintenance in one or linked applications. The field concerns functionality, data architecture and implementation practice of this system type, not the information policy that precedes it.

CAFM is, for most FM organisations, the primary system in which daily work is recorded and steered. The quality of a CAFM implementation determines in practice whether every other knowledge domain — maintenance, compliance, energy — has usable data to work with.

• Does the CAFM system support the work process, or does the work have to bend to the system's logic?
• Were the information requirements (what must be recorded, and why) set before implementation began?

• IFMA and EuroFM practice literature and research on CAFM implementation practice.

• A CAFM implementation is an organisational change, not an IT project; resistance usually arises from the work process, not the software.

• CAFM & Information Management

• Setting information requirements and system configuration

• Regieorganisatie — managing organisation / intelligent client function

  CAFM is often the actual instrument of oversight; without a well-configured system, oversight becomes a series of phone calls.

• No specific ISO standard for CAFM functionality; it does connect with ISO 41011 (terminology) and ISO 19650 (information management, from the construction sector).

The standards section arrives in Part 7.

• CAFM and IWMS used interchangeably as if identical; see the separate treatment of both in this cluster and in the distinctions.

Integration of CAFM with IoT sensor data and BIM models is widely promised by vendors, but working examples at portfolio scale — across multiple building types and suppliers — remain scarce.

• IFMA research reports on CAFM/IWMS adoption.