How to Set up a CAFM Asset Register

What goes wrong most often

Most asset registers fail for the same reason. Someone starts recording equipment before deciding how locations and IDs will work. Six weeks later there are three different ways of writing the same floor name, two assets with the same tag, and no way to tell whether “AHU-3” is the third air handling unit in the building or the third one on that floor.

The survey is the expensive part. Do the thinking first.

Step by Step to Set up a CAFM Asset Register

Step 1: Decide what counts as an asset

Not every object in a building belongs in the register. A register with every door handle in it becomes unusable, and nobody maintains it.

A reasonable test: record something as an asset if at least one of these is true.

• It needs planned maintenance
• It fails in a way that disrupts the building or creates a risk
• It has a statutory inspection requirement
• It is worth enough to track for financial or insurance reasons
• You need its repair history to decide when to replace it

Write this rule down and share it with whoever does the survey. Without it, two surveyors will record different things in different buildings.

Also decide how far down you go. Is a chiller one asset, or is it a chiller with its own compressors, pumps and controls recorded separately? Deeper detail gives better failure history but costs much more to collect and maintain. For most teams, one level below the main plant item is enough.

Step 2: Build the location hierarchy first

Every asset needs a location, and locations need a consistent structure. A common one:

Site, then building, then floor, then room or zone.

Some estates need more levels, some fewer. What matters is that it is the same everywhere, and that it matches how your team actually talks about the building. If technicians say “Tower B, level 3, plant room”, do not build a hierarchy around a room numbering scheme nobody uses.

Fix the spelling and format now. “Level 3”, “L3”, “3rd Floor” and “Floor 3” will otherwise all appear in your data, and none of them will match.

If your site has floor plans or a room numbering scheme from the building handover, start there rather than inventing one.

Step 3: Agree an ID scheme

Every asset needs a unique ID that never changes and never gets reused.

Two approaches work.

A meaningful code carries information in the ID, such as building, asset type and a sequence number. Something like TWB-L03-AHU-001. This is readable on a tag and easy for technicians to interpret, but it breaks when an asset is moved or a building is renamed.

A plain sequence number carries no meaning. The system holds the location and type in separate fields. This never breaks, but a technician looking at a tag learns nothing without scanning it.

Both are defensible. What matters more is the rules you set around whichever you pick:

• IDs are never reused, even after an asset is scrapped
• IDs never change, even when an asset moves
• One asset, one ID, no duplicates
• The format is fixed, including how many digits and where the separators go

Write the scheme down in one page before the survey starts.

Step 4: Choose the fields you will record

There is a temptation to capture everything. Resist it. Every extra field is data someone has to collect on site, and then keep accurate forever.

Fields most registers genuinely need:

Useful but optional: warranty expiry, supplier, expected life, purchase cost, photo, document links.

Be careful with purchase cost and expected life. If nobody has that information reliably, an empty field is better than a guessed one. Guessed data is worse than missing data because people trust it.

Step 5: Set criticality while you are there

Criticality is the field that makes the register useful rather than just a list. Three levels is usually enough.

High criticality means failure stops the building working, creates a safety risk, or breaches a statutory requirement. Medium means failure causes disruption but there is a workaround or a backup. Low means failure is an inconvenience.

Agree the definitions before the survey, not after. If each surveyor decides what “critical” means, the field is worthless.

Step 6: Run the survey

Two main options.

Doing it in-house is cheaper and your team knows the estate, but it competes with day to day work and usually takes longer than planned. Using a specialist surveyor is faster and more consistent, but costs more and the surveyor does not know your buildings.

Either way:

• Give surveyors the asset definition rule, the location hierarchy and the ID scheme in writing
• Survey one area first, review the output, then fix the approach before doing the rest
• Capture photos, especially of nameplates. Serial numbers get transcribed wrongly and a photo settles the argument
• Record what you could not access rather than leaving a silent gap

That pilot area step saves more time than anything else on this page. Finding a problem after one floor is a morning’s rework. Finding it after twelve floors is a project.

Step 7: Tag the assets physically

A register is much harder to maintain if a technician standing in front of a pump cannot tell which record it is.

Use durable labels suited to the environment. Plant rooms get hot, wet and dirty, and paper labels do not survive. QR or barcode tags let technicians pull the record on a phone, which makes updates far more likely to happen.

Put the tag somewhere visible without moving a panel.

Step 8: Check the data before you load it

Before importing anything, run these checks:

• Duplicate IDs
• Blank required fields
• Locations that do not match your hierarchy exactly
• Install dates in the future, or absurdly far in the past
• Asset types spelled several different ways
• Parent references pointing at assets that do not exist

Spot check a sample against the building itself. Pick twenty assets at random and confirm they are where the data says they are.

Loading bad data is much cheaper to prevent than to fix once work orders and history are attached to it. For a fuller list of what a system needs at go live, see what data you need before go live.

Step 9: Decide who keeps it current

A register is accurate on the day it is built and decays from then on. Equipment gets replaced, moved and removed, and unless someone records that, the register quietly becomes fiction.

Set the rules now:

• New equipment is added to the register before it is commissioned
• Removed equipment is marked as disposed, not deleted, so history is kept
• Technicians can flag wrong data from the mobile app
• Somebody owns a review each year

The last one matters most. Without a named owner, it does not happen.

Common mistakes

Surveying before agreeing the ID scheme. This is the big one and it forces a re-survey.

Recording too much detail. Registers that capture forty fields per asset are rarely kept up to date, because nobody has time.

Deleting assets instead of marking them disposed. You lose the maintenance history, which is the thing that told you when to replace the next one.

Letting location names drift. Once three spellings of a floor exist, reporting by location stops working.

Treating the register as a one-off project. It is a live record, not a deliverable.

Frequently asked questions

How long does it take to build an asset register?

It depends on the size of the estate, how deep you go and whether you survey in-house. The survey itself is usually the longest part. Doing a pilot area first gives you a realistic rate to plan the rest.

Can I build an asset register in a spreadsheet?

Yes, and for a single small building that may be enough. The difficulty comes with keeping it current across several people and sites, and linking it to work orders and history. Most teams move to a system once the register passes a few hundred assets.

What is the difference between an asset register and an asset inventory?

They overlap. An inventory is usually a count of what exists. A register is the maintained record used to run maintenance, holding location, criticality, history and condition alongside the list.

Should every asset have a QR code?

Not necessarily every one, but tagging anything that gets maintained regularly makes updates much more likely to happen, because the technician can reach the record while standing in front of the equipment.

How detailed should the asset hierarchy be?

Deep enough to answer the questions you actually ask. If you never report at component level, recording components adds cost with no benefit. One level below the main plant item suits most teams.

For other facility management terms explained in plain English, see our FM glossary.