Building preventive maintenance software is a CMMS configured for a building: calendar-triggered tasks rather than meters, a request form occupants will use, contractor visits scheduled and their certificates filed, and a compliance file that answers an inspector. Building maintenance software programs sold to facilities teams are mostly the same products sold to plants with those four things emphasised. This page says what each has to do, where a building's needs differ from a factory's, and the test to run in a trial before buying.
Calendar schedules and the seasons
A building's tasks run on dates: the monthly walk, the quarterly filter change, the pre-summer cooling service, the annual fire test. The software has to raise them on the calendar, level them across the year, and show the overdue list by area. Meter-based scheduling matters less than in a plant, though generators and lifts have hour counts. Seasonal tasks need to be raised with lead time so that contractors can be booked in the quarter before.
Occupant requests
The people in the building report most faults, and they are not maintenance staff. The request form has to be a page anyone can use from a phone: where, what, a photo. The supervisor triages and raises the work order with a priority from the consequence; the requester sees the status. A building system that makes occupants pick an asset from a register gets no requests, and the faults arrive as complaints instead.
Contractors and certificates
Most building plant is serviced by contractors on agreements. The software schedules their visits, sends the work order, receives the report and the certificate against the asset, and dates the next visit from it. Recommendations in the report are raised as the building's own corrective work orders. The compliance file, every certificate in date order by asset, is the report an inspector asks for and the one a building system has to produce on the spot.
The test before buying
Import the building's plant list. Put the year's statutory tests on the calendar with lead times. Raise a request from a phone as an occupant would, triage it, and close the work order with a finding. Attach a certificate to a contractor's work order and see the next visit dated. Pull the overdue statutory list by area. A product that does those in a trial is building maintenance software; one that needs an integrator to do them is a plant system wearing a facilities label. The maintenance log worksheet on this site is the single-building record to import.
Questions people ask about building preventive maintenance software
Is building maintenance software different from a CMMS?
It is a CMMS with calendar scheduling, occupant requests and contractor certificates emphasised. Most products do both; the configuration decides.
Does a single building need software?
A small building runs on the worksheets on this site. Several buildings, or one with many statutory tests, wants the system for the compliance file and the overdue list by area.
What is the most important feature for a building?
The request form occupants will actually use, and the certificate filed against the asset. Everything else follows from those two.