Glossary
Facility and maintenance management glossary
Plain definitions of CAFM, CMMS, work requests, work orders, preventive maintenance, MTBF, MTTR and the other terms facility and maintenance teams use.
Facility and maintenance management has its own vocabulary, and the same idea often goes by two or three names. This page defines the terms you will meet when you compare software or organise maintenance work, and puts side by side the ones that are easily confused.
Each definition stands on its own. Where it helps, a short note says how Prosas handles the term — and, for some terms, what Prosas does not do.
Disciplines and software categories
What facility management and maintenance management are, and the names used for the software that supports them.
Facility management (FM)
Facility management is the work of keeping buildings and the services inside them running: maintenance, cleaning, security, space, reception and the contracts behind them.
It covers the whole building and the people who use it. Maintenance is one part of it.
Maintenance management
Maintenance management is the planning, scheduling, execution and recording of the work that keeps equipment and buildings in working order — both repairs after a failure and planned work that prevents one.
It is narrower than facility management: it is about the equipment and the work done on it, not about cleaning, visitors or space.
Facility management software
Facility management software is an application that records a building's locations, equipment and service requests, and manages the work that keeps them running.
Products in this category are usually described as CAFM, CMMS or IWMS, depending on how far beyond maintenance they go.
In Prosas: Prosas is facility management software that runs in a web browser, in Arabic and English. Every Prosas module
CAFM (computer-aided facility management)
CAFM software manages the building side of facility management: locations and spaces, maintenance requests, cleaning, visitors, security and the services delivered in the building.
The term dates from software that started with floor plans and space allocation. Most CAFM products today also include maintenance.
In Prosas: Prosas covers locations, space booking, housekeeping, reception, visitors and security alongside its maintenance modules. Facility services modules
CMMS (computerized maintenance management system)
A CMMS is software for managing maintenance work: it keeps a register of equipment, turns requests into work orders, schedules preventive maintenance and records the history, parts and labour of every job.
Maintenance teams use a CMMS to know what is broken, who is fixing it, what is due next and what each machine has cost.
In Prosas: Prosas includes work requests, work orders, preventive maintenance plans, an equipment register, spare parts and reliability metrics such as MTBF and MTTR. Maintenance modules
IWMS (integrated workplace management system)
An IWMS combines facility maintenance with real-estate and workplace management — lease administration, the property portfolio, capital projects, space planning and often energy management — in one system.
It is broader than CAFM and is usually bought by organisations that manage a large property portfolio.
In Prosas: Prosas is not an IWMS: it has no lease administration, real-estate portfolio or energy management.
EAM (enterprise asset management)
EAM software manages physical assets over their whole life — acquisition, maintenance, spare parts, cost and disposal — usually across the many sites of a large organisation.
It overlaps heavily with CMMS. The difference is scope: EAM adds the asset's financial life and organisation-wide reporting to the maintenance work.
In Prosas: Prosas has an asset register with custodians, transfers, disposal and depreciation next to its maintenance modules. Equipment and asset modules
| Category | Centre of gravity | Typically covers |
|---|---|---|
| CAFM | The building and its services | Locations and spaces, maintenance requests, cleaning, visitors, security |
| CMMS | Maintenance work on equipment | Equipment register, work orders, preventive maintenance, spare parts, maintenance history |
| IWMS | The whole property portfolio | Everything in CAFM, plus leases, real estate, capital projects and energy |
| EAM | The asset over its whole life | Everything in CMMS, plus asset finance, lifecycle cost and multi-site reporting |
Where Prosas fits: Prosas is CAFM and CMMS software in one system. It covers the building and its services and the maintenance of its equipment, together with the inventory, purchasing and invoicing that maintenance depends on. It is not an IWMS, and it has no sensor integration.
Maintenance work
The kinds of maintenance, and the requests, orders and plans that organise them.
Work request (maintenance request)
A work request is a report that something needs attention — a leak, a fault, a broken fitting — raised by anyone who notices it. It describes the problem; it does not yet assign or schedule any work.
Someone responsible reviews each request and decides whether it becomes a work order.
In Prosas: Staff, tenants and visitors can submit a request through a public link, or by scanning a QR code on a machine, with no account, and follow it by reference number. Each request is rejected, returned for more detail or converted into a work order. How work requests work
Work order
A work order is an authorised job: it says what work will be done, on which asset or location, by whom, by when and with which materials.
It is also the record of the job once it is done — the time spent, the parts used, the cost and the outcome.
In Prosas: Prosas work orders have a type, a priority, an SLA due date, a checklist, materials, labour and before-and-after photos, and move through statuses from open to closed. Work orders in Prosas
Corrective maintenance (reactive maintenance)
Corrective maintenance is work done to restore equipment after a fault or failure has been found.
Some corrective work is unavoidable. A high share of it usually means problems are being found by breakdowns rather than by inspections and planned work.
Preventive maintenance (PM)
Preventive maintenance is work planned in advance and done at regular intervals — by calendar time or by usage — to keep equipment from failing.
Typical examples are filter changes, lubrication and routine inspections.
In Prosas: Prosas maintenance plans create preventive work orders ahead of each due date, on a fixed schedule or based on a machine's MTBF. Preventive maintenance plans
Predictive maintenance
Predictive maintenance schedules work from the measured condition of equipment — vibration, temperature, oil analysis and similar readings — so that the work is done shortly before a failure becomes likely.
It usually depends on sensors or condition-monitoring equipment.
In Prosas: Prosas has no sensor integration. Its closest feature is plans triggered by a machine's MTBF, which is calculated from its recorded failures and operating hours.
Emergency maintenance
Emergency maintenance is corrective work that cannot wait, because the failure threatens safety or stops operations. It is done at once, ahead of the planned schedule.
In Prosas: Emergency is one of the five work order types in Prosas, next to preventive, corrective, installation and inspection.
Maintenance plan (PM schedule)
A maintenance plan defines recurring work: which equipment, which tasks, how often and who does them.
A good plan generates its work orders ahead of the due date, so the job is in the team's queue before it is due.
In Prosas: A Prosas plan can cover chosen machines or a whole equipment category, uses a lead time to create work orders early, and lets you skip or move a single date without changing the plan. Maintenance plans in Prosas
Inspection round
An inspection round is a planned visit to check equipment or an area against a checklist and record what was found.
A failed check usually leads to corrective work.
In Prosas: Prosas inspection rounds use checklist templates, record each visit's GPS check-in and its result — passed, failed or partial — and can be linked to work orders. Inspection rounds
| Aspect | Work request | Work order |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Reports a problem | Authorises and plans the work |
| Raised by | Anyone who notices the problem | The maintenance team, from a request or a plan |
| Contains | What is wrong, and where | Tasks, assignee, due date, materials, labour and cost |
| Ends when | It is rejected, or converted into a work order | The work is completed and closed |
| Type | Triggered by | When the work happens | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Corrective | A fault or failure | After the failure | Replacing a burnt-out pump motor |
| Preventive | A time interval or an amount of use | On a planned date, before failure | Changing air-handling unit filters every three months |
| Predictive | The measured condition of the equipment | When readings show a failure is approaching | Replacing a bearing when its vibration rises |
Measuring maintenance
The numbers maintenance teams use to judge reliability, speed and discipline.
MTBF (mean time between failures)
MTBF is the average operating time between one failure of a repairable machine and the next. It is calculated as total operating time divided by the number of failures in the period.
A higher MTBF means a more reliable machine. It only means something with an honest record of failures and of the hours the machine actually runs.
In Prosas: Prosas calculates MTBF for each machine from its failure work orders and its operating-hours routine.
MTTR (mean time to repair)
MTTR is the average time it takes to repair a failed machine and return it to service, from the failure to the restoration.
It measures how quickly the team responds and fixes. Some teams measure from the report rather than from the failure, so state which definition you use.
In Prosas: MTTR is one of the KPIs on Prosas's role dashboards and in its maintenance reports. Reports and dashboards
Downtime
Downtime is the time a machine or system is out of service because of a failure or maintenance.
Unplanned downtime is the cost that preventive maintenance exists to reduce.
In Prosas: Prosas records downtime on the work order, from when the machine went down to when it was restored.
PM compliance (preventive maintenance compliance)
PM compliance is the share of scheduled preventive maintenance that was completed on time in a period, usually given as a percentage.
It shows whether planned work is actually happening or being pushed aside by breakdowns.
In Prosas: Prosas shows preventive-maintenance compliance on its dashboards and in its reports.
SLA (service level agreement) in maintenance
In maintenance and facility services, an SLA sets how quickly work must be responded to and completed, usually by priority — for example, critical faults within hours and routine requests within days.
The SLA gives each job a due date, and the team is measured on how many jobs meet it.
In Prosas: Prosas gives each work order an SLA due date and flags orders that are near or past it. Housekeeping tasks have their own response and resolution targets by priority. Work orders and SLAs
Assets, spare parts and stock
The registers of what you maintain, and the parts and purchases the work depends on.
Equipment register
An equipment register is the list of every machine a maintenance team looks after, with its location, specifications, warranty and maintenance history.
It is the foundation of a CMMS: work orders, plans and spare parts all refer to it.
In Prosas: Each machine in Prosas has a printable QR code that opens its record, or a public page where anyone can report a fault. The equipment register
Fixed asset register
A fixed asset register is the finance record of what an organisation owns — its cost, value, location, custodian and depreciation — kept for accounting and audit.
It overlaps with the equipment register but answers a different question: what an asset is worth, not how it is maintained.
In Prosas: Prosas keeps an asset register for equipment, vehicles, furniture, IT, buildings, land and intangible assets, with transfers and disposal. Asset register and depreciation
Depreciation
Depreciation spreads the cost of an asset over its useful life, so that its value in the accounts falls as it is used.
Common methods are straight-line (the same amount each period), declining balance (a fixed percentage of the remaining value) and units of production (in proportion to use).
In Prosas: Prosas supports all three methods and posts depreciation to journal entries.
Spare parts (MRO inventory)
Spare parts are the components kept in stock to repair or service equipment. Together with consumables they are often called MRO (maintenance, repair and operations) inventory.
Knowing which part fits which machine, and what is in stock, is what stops a repair waiting for a part.
In Prosas: Prosas links spare parts to stock, records which part is installed on which machine, and takes the parts used on a work order out of stock. Spare parts and inventory
Minimum and maximum stock levels
The minimum level is the quantity at which an item should be reordered; the maximum level caps how much of it is held. Between the two, stock is replenished before it runs out without tying money up in excess stock.
The minimum is also called the reorder point.
In Prosas: Prosas raises an in-app alert when an item reaches its minimum level in a warehouse.
Purchase order (PO)
A purchase order is a buyer's formal order to a supplier for goods or services at agreed quantities and prices. Once accepted, it commits both sides.
In maintenance, purchase orders replenish spare parts and buy services from contractors.
In Prosas: Prosas purchase orders go through an approval step. Confirming one creates a receipt, validating the receipt adds the goods to stock, and a vendor invoice can be created from the order. Purchasing in Prosas
Buildings and facility services
How a portfolio of buildings is described, and the services that run inside it.
Location hierarchy
A location hierarchy describes where everything is, from the largest unit to the smallest: site, building, floor and room.
Every request, asset and job is attached to a point in the hierarchy, so work and costs can be reported by building or by floor.
In Prosas: Prosas organises locations as sites, buildings, floors and rooms, with each room's type, area and capacity. Locations in Prosas
Space booking (room booking)
Space booking lets people reserve shared spaces, such as meeting rooms and halls, for a time slot without double bookings.
In Prosas: Prosas blocks overlapping bookings and records each space's amenities, capacity and hourly rate.
Housekeeping management
Housekeeping management plans and tracks cleaning work: schedules, crews, checklists and inspection of the finished work.
Response and resolution targets by priority make it measurable in the same way as maintenance.
In Prosas: Prosas housekeeping escalates a late task automatically and includes supervisor sign-off of the finished work. Housekeeping in Prosas
Visitor management
Visitor management records who is coming to a site, whom they are visiting and when they arrive and leave, usually with host approval and a visitor badge.
In Prosas: Prosas visit passes need host approval and print a badge with a QR code, and a visitor who overstays is flagged. Visitors and gates
See these terms at work
The modules page shows how Prosas handles requests, work orders, preventive plans, assets and stock, and the FAQ answers the practical questions.