Building and Facilities Management: The Operations and Maintenance Guide (2026)

What Is Building and Facilities Management?

Building and facilities management is the practice of operating, maintaining, and improving buildings and their systems so they support the business inside them. It spans the physical infrastructure, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, elevators, refrigeration, and the services that keep it functional and safe.

The discipline breaks down into two linked halves. Operations is the day-to-day running of a building: monitoring equipment, adjusting settings, keeping systems performing as designed. Maintenance is the upkeep and repair that keeps those systems reliable over time. Together they form operations and maintenance, the framework at the heart of facilities management.

Facilities management also splits its services into hard services (physical systems like HVAC and electrical) and soft services (people-focused work like cleaning and security). We cover that distinction in our guide to hard and soft facilities management.

Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Explained

The Federal Energy Management Program defines operations and maintenance as the decisions and actions regarding the control and upkeep of property and equipment. In plain terms, O&M is everything you do to keep a building and its systems running well throughout their lifespan.

O&M matters because it is one of the most cost-effective levers in the entire building. Well-practiced O&M generates substantial savings: government research estimates that O&M programs targeting efficiency can cut energy bills by 5 to 20% without significant capital investment. Beyond energy, disciplined O&M prevents the catastrophic failures, increased repair costs, and regulatory penalties that neglect invites.

A complete O&M program covers routine operations (monitoring and adjusting equipment), preventive maintenance (scheduled upkeep), corrective repairs, and the spare parts and supplies (MRO) that keep it all running. The through-line is that O&M is not a cost to minimize; it is a resource that, managed well, pays for itself.

The Maintenance Approaches Inside O&M

O&M has evolved over the last century from simple failure response into a set of distinct maintenance approaches. A mature building and facilities program blends them by asset criticality.

Reactive maintenance: Fix equipment after it fails. Simplest and most expensive; an emergency repair costs several times a planned one.

Preventive maintenance: Service equipment on a schedule before it fails. The backbone of cost-effective O&M, catching problems before they become failures.

Predictive maintenance: Use condition data to service equipment only when signals justify it. Powerful for critical assets, but dependent on a system to turn predictions into tracked work.

Reliability-centered maintenance: A strategic framework assigning the right approach to each asset based on how critical it is.

The key point for building and facilities management is that no single approach fits every asset. A chiller warrants predictive attention; a hallway light does not. What ties the mix together, and makes it actually run, is a system that schedules, assigns, and tracks the work. For a deeper look at how software runs each approach, see our CMMS for maintenance guide.

Why Tracking Is Everything

Here is where most building and facilities programs succeed or fail: tracking. A maintenance plan that is not tracked is just intention. The building where nobody knows what got done, when, or at what cost is the building where equipment fails unexpectedly and costs spiral.

Effective O&M depends on tracking three things:

Work order tracking: Every repair and maintenance task captured as a work order, assigned, and followed to completion, so nothing falls through the cracks between a report and a fix.

Asset tracking: Every piece of equipment with a complete service history, often via QR code, so you know what has been done to it and can decide whether to repair or replace.

Cost tracking: Every maintenance dollar captured against the building, asset, and category, so spend is visible and controllable, not discovered on an invoice.

Without tracking, technicians get dispatched to the wrong place, schedules overlap or get missed, and data silos hide the true state of the building. With it, facility managers spend their time on planning instead of firefighting. Operio users cut approval time from 120 hours to 2 and resolve faults 40% faster by tracking this way.*

Managing O&M Across Multiple Buildings

A single building can be tracked with discipline. Across many buildings, retail chains, hotel groups, healthcare networks, O&M becomes a coordination problem that only a centralized system solves. Each site has its own equipment, schedules, and compliance requirements, and without technology, coordinating them is a logistical nightmare.

A CMMS gives multi-building operators one dashboard across every site: open work orders, preventive maintenance compliance, asset history, and cost, filtered by building, system, or vendor. It standardizes O&M so every building runs the same way, coordinates the vendors who execute specialized work, and keeps budget visible before spend is committed.

This is what Operio is built for, running O&M across multi-location retail, hospitality, and facility operations, with work order and asset tracking, vendor coordination, and cost control in one platform, plus full Turkish-language support. Operio users hold equipment uptime at 96% and cut unplanned spend by roughly 30%.* To see it on your buildings, get in touch.

The difference between the two is tracking, and across multiple buildings, tracking requires a system. A CMMS runs O&M by capturing every work order, asset, and cost in one place, turning a maintenance plan into a controlled, measurable program. Operio brings that together for multi-location operations, with roughly 30% lower unplanned spend once it is in place.*

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* Operio performance figures are based on data from Operio users.

FAQ

1. What is building and facilities management? Building and facilities management is the practice of operating, maintaining, and improving buildings and their systems, HVAC, electrical, plumbing, elevators, so they run safely and efficiently. Its core framework is operations and maintenance (O&M), covering the day-to-day running and the upkeep that keeps systems reliable over time.

2. What is operations and maintenance (O&M)? O&M is defined as the decisions and actions regarding the control and upkeep of property and equipment. It covers routine operations (monitoring and adjusting equipment), preventive and corrective maintenance, and the supplies that keep systems running. Effective O&M can cut energy bills by 5 to 20% and prevents costly failures.

3. What software is used for building maintenance? The standard tool is a CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System), which tracks work orders, preventive maintenance schedules, asset history, and spare parts in one system. It is widely considered a best practice for building operations and maintenance. For multi-location operations, a CMMS also provides cross-building visibility and cost control.

4. Why is tracking important in facilities management? Tracking is what turns a maintenance plan into results. Work order tracking ensures nothing is forgotten, asset tracking gives each piece of equipment a full service history, and cost tracking makes spend visible and controllable. Without tracking, technicians get misdirected, schedules get missed, and the true state of the building stays hidden.

5. What are MRO supplies in building maintenance? MRO stands for maintenance, repair, and operations supplies, the spare parts, tools, and consumables needed to keep building equipment running. Tracking MRO inventory against work orders and assets prevents both stockouts and overstocking. We cover this in depth in our guide to maintenance inventory management.