Unlike care-planning platforms, which focus on resident care, medication, and care hours, CAFM systems focus on the physical estate. They support key processes such as maintenance scheduling, asset tracking, task allocation, and safety checks. For example, Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) can be automated to ensure equipment such as hoists and HVAC units is serviced at the appropriate intervals.
By centralising these processes, CAFM software helps care homes maintain compliance, strengthen governance, and demonstrate continuous improvement. This can also support providers to meet the Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) expectations for effective management, quality, and safety.
Supporting CQC compliance
Meeting CQC requirements is a fundamental responsibility for every care home. Regulation 17: Good Governance requires providers to have effective systems and processes to assess, monitor and drive improvements in the quality and safety of their services.
For estates and facilities teams, this means having clear processes for managing maintenance, inspections, audits, compliance tasks, risk assessments and remedial actions.
With a suitable CAFM system, organisations can keep a centralised log of all audits, inspections, and assessments conducted. Having a digitised system makes it easier to provide evidence that you are meeting CQC compliance requirements.
The fmfirst® software suite can be tailored to meet these requirements, giving care organisations a centralised platform to manage estate-related activities and compliance information.
Managing maintenance and estates more effectively
A well-managed care home estate requires visibility across a wide range of activities. From planned preventative maintenance and statutory inspections to cleaning, health and safety checks and environmental audits, tracking multiple tasks can be challenging.
fmfirst® helps bring these activities together in one accessible system. Tasks can be assigned to individuals or departments, with automated reminders ensuring important actions are not overlooked. Relevant documentation can also be attached to tasks and audits, creating a clear audit trail.
The integrated Helpdesk provides further support by allowing estates teams to manage jobs from initial allocation through to completion. Real-time information and reporting provide greater visibility of outstanding work, response times and performance against key performance indicators (KPIs).
Driving continuous improvement
Effective estate management is about more than simply meeting compliance requirements. Accurate data and consistent reporting can help care organisations identify recurring issues, monitor performance and make informed decisions about where improvements are needed.
By bringing compliance, audits, maintenance and reporting together, digital estate management software can help care providers maintain safer environments, improve operational efficiency and demonstrate effective governance.
For care organisations preparing for CQC inspections, accurate, accessible and up-to-date estate management records can provide valuable evidence that processes are being monitored, responsibilities are clearly defined, and opportunities for improvement are being identified and addressed.
Contractors
To support resource management, many care homes use contractors for specialised building, maintenance, and technical tasks that regular care staff cannot safely or legally perform. Within Asckey’s fmfirst® Tasking platform, there is a portal specifically designed for contractors to use.
Care homes can allocate jobs to a specific contractor, who will receive the work order directly on their mobile devices with exact site details and priority levels. They can snap photos of fixed equipment and secure digital sign-offs before jobs are marked as complete. This digital trail provides real-time reporting on performance and job logging to support invoicing.
Digital way forward
Moving to a digital system allows users to store warranties, inspection records, service histories, and safety certificates in one place for audits. It can also help with stock management and asset tracking. A CAFM system allows users to store records of beds, hoists, boilers, call bells, and any other assets that need monitoring, and where they are stored and need servicing.
Within fmfirst®, you can securely maintain accurate, detailed records for each person using the system and for each patient/client within the system. Each user can be allocated a restricted number of permissions based on their job role within the organisation. This means that people can only access what they’re supposed to or need to.
fmfirst® aims to provide users with full visibility from job allocation to completion and shows real-time data, allowing you to track KPI’s through colour-coded dashboards. The available reporting function provides drill-down capability so you can assess and measure your performance and identify opportunities for improvement.
We want our software to empower care organisations to control and manage their performance in readiness for CQC inspections. In a world where budgets are tight and resources are few, having the right system in place can have a big impact.
If you’d like to learn more about our estate management software for care homes, please contact us.
