Software: Evolution and Integration of CMMS, CAFM, IWMStest

By Kion Gibbs

January 2017

The reach of facility management software these days extends beyond the realm of physical facilities. Increasingly, maintenance and engineering managers find themselves trying to harness the capabilities of more integrated and powerful technology. As important and helpful as spreadsheets and computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) have been to departments, they simply no longer can effectively keep up with organizational demands of institutional and commercial facilities.

As facilities become more sophisticated and as responsibilities that once belonged to separate departments begin to merge under facilities departments, the facility management profession has begun to embody the entirety of the field.

Formerly, and in varying capacities depending on industry and organization, facility management encompassed the planning and performance of operations and maintenance, or only a select few of the 11 core competencies of the field identified by the International Facility Management Association:

• communications
• quality
• technology
• operations and maintenance
• human factors
• finance and business
• emergency planning and business continuity
• leadership and strategy
• real estate and property management
• project management
• sustainability.