Free CFM Exam Flashcards

An SFP is a long-range plan, typically covering two to five years, that translates the demand organization's business strategy into facility requirements. A tactical or annual plan covers the next budget year and schedules the specific projects, maintenance, and service levels needed to move toward the SFP. The SFP answers 'what portfolio do we need'; the annual plan answers 'what do we fund and do this year'.

The demand organization is the entity that needs the facility services and has the authority to spend to meet those requirements -- the internal client or business. The supply organization is whoever delivers the services, whether an in-house FM team or an outsourced provider. The distinction matters because FM's job is to translate demand-side business needs into supply-side service specifications and service levels.

Project management delivers the technical output on scope, schedule, and budget -- the new floor plan, the relocated department, the replaced chiller. Change management addresses the people side: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement, so the affected occupants actually adopt the new way of working. A project can finish on time and still fail if adoption is not managed.

A two-by-two used to right-size stakeholder effort. High power + high interest: manage closely and engage directly. High power + low interest: keep satisfied without overloading them. Low power + high interest: keep informed, since they often supply useful detail. Low power + low interest: monitor with minimal effort. The grid prevents FM from spending equal communication effort on unequal stakeholders.

SWOT mixes internal factors (strengths, weaknesses) with external ones (opportunities, threats) for a specific organization or decision. PESTEL scans only the external environment across political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal factors. Use PESTEL to detect outside forces acting on the facility portfolio, then feed those findings into the external half of a SWOT.

Preventive maintenance (PM) is scheduled on fixed intervals of time or runtime regardless of actual condition -- change the filter every 90 days. Predictive maintenance (PdM) is condition-based: vibration analysis, infrared thermography, oil analysis, and ultrasound detect degradation so work is done only when data shows it is needed. PM can replace healthy parts; PdM aims to intervene just before failure.

Corrective maintenance repairs a fault after it has been found or has failed, and it is performed within the current period. Deferred maintenance is work that was identified and scheduled but postponed past its due date, usually for lack of funding. Deferred work accumulates into a backlog, is the numerator of the facility condition index, and typically becomes more expensive the longer it is delayed.

FCI = cost of deferred maintenance / current replacement value of the asset, expressed as a percentage. A lower FCI means better condition. Common practice treats roughly under 5% as good, 5-10% as fair, and above 10% as poor, though the bands vary by source, so always state the scale you are using. FCI supports portfolio-level triage: which buildings to fund, renovate, or dispose of.

Hard services relate to the physical fabric and engineering plant and are largely non-discretionary and often statutory: HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire protection, elevators, and building structure. Soft services make the space usable and pleasant and are more discretionary: cleaning, security, catering, landscaping, waste, reception, and mail. Budget pressure usually cuts soft services first, which is why service-level definitions matter there most.

Control IAQ in order of effectiveness: source control first (remove or substitute the contaminant, isolate the process), then ventilation with adequate outdoor air, then filtration and air cleaning. ASHRAE Standard 62.1 sets minimum ventilation rates for acceptable IAQ. Indoor CO2 is used as a proxy for how much outdoor air is being delivered per person, not as a direct toxicity limit.

Mitigation reduces the likelihood or the impact of a risk by changing what you do -- adding redundancy, installing suppression, training staff. Transfer shifts the financial consequence to another party through insurance, contractual indemnification, or outsourcing, but the event is just as likely to happen and the reputational and operational fallout usually stays with you. The other two responses are avoid (stop the activity) and accept (fund the consequence).

Inherent risk is the exposure before any controls are applied. Residual risk is what remains after existing controls are in place, and it is the number leadership must decide to accept or spend more to reduce. A risk register should record both, plus the risk owner and the treatment, so the effect of a control is visible rather than assumed.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is how quickly a function must be restored. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is how much data or transaction loss is tolerable, which sets backup frequency. Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) is the outer limit past which the business suffers unacceptable harm; RTO must be shorter than MTD to leave room for the actual restoration work.

The emergency response plan governs the first minutes and hours: life safety, evacuation or shelter-in-place, and incident command. The business continuity plan keeps critical business functions running, potentially from an alternate site, while normal operations are down. The disaster recovery plan is the narrower technology and data restoration piece that supports continuity.

Mitigation reduces hazard exposure before anything happens (elevating equipment, hardening structures). Preparedness builds capability (plans, training, drills, supplies). Response is the action during the incident (life safety, incident command, communication). Recovery restores operations and rebuilds, and is normally the longest and most expensive phase. FM work exists in all four, not just response.

NPV discounts every future cash flow back to today at the organization's hurdle rate and sums them; a positive NPV means the project beats that required return. Payback simply counts how long until cumulative savings repay the initial outlay. Payback ignores the time value of money and completely ignores every cash flow after the payback point, so it can reject a long-lived energy retrofit that NPV would approve.

CapEx buys or materially improves an asset and extends its useful life, so it is capitalized on the balance sheet and depreciated over time. OpEx is the routine cost of running the facility and is expensed in the period it is incurred. The classification drives which budget and approval path applies, which is why replacing a chiller and repairing one land in completely different funding conversations.

LCC sums acquisition, installation, energy, operations, maintenance, renewal, and disposal or residual value across the asset's whole life, discounted to present value for comparison. Because operating and maintenance costs usually dwarf first cost over a building system's life, the lowest-bid option is frequently the most expensive choice on an LCC basis. Always state the study period and discount rate.

Incremental budgeting starts from last year's approved figure and adjusts it up or down, which quietly carries forward every embedded inefficiency. Zero-based budgeting starts at zero and requires every line item to be justified from scratch each cycle. Zero-based takes far more effort but is the stronger tool when FM must defend service levels or expose costs that no longer match demand.

A Request for Information gathers market intelligence and qualifies who could do the work; it is not a buying document. A Request for Quotation asks for pricing against a fully defined specification, so award turns mainly on price. A Request for Proposal asks vendors to propose an approach as well as a price, and is evaluated on weighted criteria such as method, experience, and value, not price alone.

A sustainability decision is evaluated on three accounts rather than one: people (social equity, occupant health, community), planet (environmental impact), and profit (economic performance). It reframes sustainability spending as balancing three returns instead of trading financial return away. ESG reporting is the modern disclosure vehicle for the same three dimensions.

EUI = total annual building energy use divided by gross floor area, reported as kBtu per square foot per year or kWh per square meter per year; lower is better. It normalizes for size so buildings of different footprints can be compared. The ENERGY STAR score is a 1-100 percentile ranking against similar buildings after adjusting for weather and operating characteristics; 75 or higher indicates top-quartile performance.

Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources the organization owns or controls, such as on-site boilers and fleet vehicles. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling. Scope 3 covers everything else in the value chain -- supply chain, waste disposal, employee commuting, business travel -- and is usually the largest and hardest category to measure.

Commissioning (Cx) verifies during design and construction that new systems perform as the owner's project requirements specify. Retro-commissioning (RCx) applies the same process to an existing building that was never commissioned. Re-commissioning repeats it on a building that was. Continuous or monitoring-based commissioning uses ongoing metered data to catch drift as it happens rather than years later.

LEED (US Green Building Council) rates building environmental performance across categories such as energy, water, materials, and site, with an O+M rating system for existing buildings. WELL (International WELL Building Institute) rates the building's effect on occupant health and well-being -- air, water, light, movement, mind. BREEAM is the UK-origin environmental assessment method used widely across Europe. A project can pursue more than one.

Push sends information out to specific recipients without confirming they understood it -- memos, broadcast email, status reports. Pull places information where large audiences retrieve it themselves -- intranet, knowledge base, dashboards. Interactive is multidirectional and real-time -- meetings, calls, walkthroughs -- and is the only mode that confirms shared understanding, so use it for anything sensitive or contested.

Channels = n(n-1)/2, where n is the number of stakeholders. Adding people grows complexity far faster than headcount: 5 stakeholders create 10 channels, but 10 stakeholders create 45. This is the quantitative argument for a defined communication plan and a single point of contact on large FM projects rather than letting everyone talk to everyone.

A usable plan names, for each stakeholder group: what information they need, why they need it, who sends it, through which channel, how often, in what format, and how feedback returns. Missing the feedback loop is the most common defect -- it turns the plan into broadcasting. The plan should also define escalation paths so exceptions do not depend on individual judgment.

The sender encodes a message, transmits it through a channel, and the receiver decodes it. Noise is anything that distorts the transfer: jargon, cultural difference, a bad connection, or the receiver's assumptions. Feedback is the receiver confirming what was actually understood. Communication is only complete when feedback closes the loop, not when the message is sent.

Assigns four roles per task: Responsible (does the work), Accountable (owns the outcome and approves it), Consulted (two-way input before the decision), and Informed (one-way notification after). There must be exactly one Accountable per task; two accountable parties is the classic source of stalled FM decisions. Consulted and Informed clarify who gets a voice versus who only gets an update.

A Service Level Agreement is the contractual commitment between provider and customer, including targets, measurement method, and remedies for failure. A Key Performance Indicator is a metric used to measure performance, and only some KPIs are written into an SLA. An Operational Level Agreement is the internal back-to-back agreement between supporting teams that makes the customer-facing SLA achievable.

Internal benchmarking compares sites or periods within your own organization -- easiest data access, narrowest insight. Competitive benchmarking compares against direct competitors, often through industry surveys. Functional benchmarking compares the same function across a different industry. Generic benchmarking compares a process against best-in-class anywhere. Comparisons are only valid after normalizing for area, climate, hours of operation, and service scope.

The Deming or Shewhart improvement cycle: Plan a change against a defined problem and target, Do it on a small scale, Check the results against the target with data, then Act by standardizing the change or restarting the cycle. Its power is that it is iterative -- improvements are tested small and made permanent only after the data supports them.

Quality assurance is process-oriented and preventive: it builds the procedures, training, audits, and standards that keep defects from occurring. Quality control is product-oriented and detective: it inspects, tests, and measures the output to find defects that already occurred. QC finding a recurring defect should trigger a QA change to the process that produced it.

Lean attacks waste and flow -- overproduction, waiting, transport, overprocessing, inventory, motion, defects, and unused talent -- to shorten cycle time. Six Sigma attacks variation using the DMAIC sequence: Define the problem, Measure the current state, Analyze root cause, Improve with a tested solution, Control to sustain the gain. Lean makes the process faster; Six Sigma makes it more consistent.

In a gross lease, the tenant pays one rent and the landlord absorbs taxes, insurance, and operating expenses. In a net lease, the tenant pays base rent plus expenses -- single net adds property tax, double net adds insurance, and triple net (NNN) adds common area maintenance as well. A modified gross lease splits them, commonly with a base-year expense stop above which the tenant pays increases.

Churn rate = (number of occupant moves in 12 months / total number of occupants) x 100, expressed as a percentage. A rate above 100% is possible because some people move more than once a year. Paired with average cost per move, it converts restacking activity into a budget number and is the standard justification for flexible, standardized workstation layouts.

Usable area is the space the tenant actually occupies. Rentable area adds the tenant's proportional share of building common areas such as lobbies, corridors, and restrooms. The load factor (or add-on factor) = rentable area / usable area, and rent is charged on rentable area. Two quotes at the same rate per square foot are not comparable until you compare load factors.

Occupancy measures how much of the available space or how many of the available seats are assigned or leased -- a static, supply-side number. Utilization measures how much of that space is actually in use, observed over time through sensors, badge data, or walkthrough studies. A building can be 100% occupied and 40% utilized, and only the utilization figure justifies consolidation or hybrid workplace change.

Functional programming determines what the organization needs: headcount projections, adjacency requirements, space standards, and the resulting area requirement. Master planning determines how and where those needs are met physically over the long term -- site development, phasing, building use, and capital sequencing. Programming defines demand; the master plan allocates supply against it.

A CMMS manages maintenance: assets, work orders, PM schedules, parts, and labor history. CAFM adds the space side: floor plans, CAD/space inventory, occupancy, and move management. An IWMS is the broadest platform, integrating real estate and lease administration, capital projects, space, maintenance, and sustainability reporting in one system of record. Scope, not feature count, is the distinction.

A BAS uses networked direct digital controllers, sensors, and actuators to sequence and supervise HVAC, lighting, and related building systems, with trend logging and alarming. It is operational technology that controls equipment in real time. It is not a maintenance database: the BAS raises the alarm, and the CMMS turns that alarm into a tracked work order with labor and parts history.

BIM is an object-based 3D model carrying attribute data about building components, not just geometry. Level of Development (LOD) describes how reliable that data is at a given stage. COBie (Construction-Operations Building information exchange) is the structured, spreadsheet-friendly handover format that pulls asset, space, and warranty data out of the model and into the CMMS or IWMS, so FM must specify it before design finishes.

A BIM model is generally a static design and construction record, accurate as of handover. A digital twin is continuously fed by live data from sensors, meters, and the BAS, so it reflects the building's current state and can be used for simulation, scenario testing, and predictive maintenance. A digital twin often starts from BIM geometry, but the live data connection is what makes it a twin.

Building control systems are operational technology and are frequently the weakest network path into an organization. Core controls are network segmentation separating BAS/OT from corporate IT, changing vendor default credentials, restricting and logging remote vendor access, and patching controllers on a defined schedule. Where IT usually ranks confidentiality first, OT prioritizes availability and safety, since a failed control loop is a physical hazard.

Design-bid-build completes design first, then bids construction, giving price certainty late and leaving the owner between two contracts when conflicts arise. Design-build puts design and construction under one contract, compressing schedule and giving a single point of responsibility. CM at risk brings the constructor in during design as an advisor and then converts to a guaranteed maximum price for delivery.

Scope creep is uncontrolled expansion of the work without corresponding adjustments to schedule, budget, or resources, and it usually accumulates through informal requests made directly to the contractor. A change order is the same expansion processed through change control: documented, priced, impact-assessed, and formally approved. The defense against creep is a baselined scope plus a single authorized change route.

The critical path is the longest sequence of dependent activities through the schedule and it determines the shortest possible project duration. Activities on it have zero total float, so any delay to them delays the completion date. Total float is how long an activity can slip without delaying project completion; free float is how long it can slip without delaying its immediate successor.

Cost Performance Index = Earned Value / Actual Cost, and Schedule Performance Index = Earned Value / Planned Value. A value below 1.0 means trouble: CPI under 1.0 means you are over budget for the work completed, and SPI under 1.0 means you are behind schedule. Earned value works because it measures cost and schedule against work actually completed, not against money merely spent.

Substantial completion is when the owner can occupy and use the space for its intended purpose; it typically starts the warranty period and shifts responsibility for utilities and insurance. The punch list is the remaining minor corrective work identified at that point. Closeout is not finished until as-built drawings, O&M manuals, warranties, training, and asset data are delivered and loaded into the CMMS.