Start with the job, not the feature list
Take one real job from your estate. A leaking tap, a tripped chiller, a cracked tile. Trace it from the person who noticed it to the invoice being paid. Count the systems it touched and the number of times someone retyped the same fact.
That trace is the test. A CMMS worth buying carries that whole thread on one record: the report, the job, the permit if it needed one, the evidence the work was done, the quote and the money. If any of those live somewhere else, you are buying a work order app and keeping your spreadsheets.
The statutory spine is not optional in Australia
An overseas work order app can be excellent and still know nothing about the routines Australian buildings are held to. Check these against your own portfolio:
- Fire and essential safety measures. In NSW, AS 1851-2012 became the mandatory maintenance standard for essential fire safety measures in new and existing Class 1b and Class 2 to 9 buildings on 13 February 2026, under the Environmental Planning and Assessment (Development Certification and Fire Safety) Regulation 2021, and the records must be kept on site at the building for at least seven years. The annual fire safety statement is lodged each year, and late lodgement carries council penalties that escalate, with court penalties for continued non-compliance. Victoria runs the annual essential safety measures report, Queensland the occupier's statement. A system that handles one state's model and not the others will fail a multi state portfolio.
- Cooling towers. Registration and monthly sampling for legionella under the NSW public health regulation. The record matters as much as the sample.
- The rest of the calendar. Emergency lighting six monthly discharge tests under AS/NZS 2293, test and tag intervals, anchor recertification, backflow prevention annual testing and lift registration. Confirm each interval against the current standard and your state's requirements.
The question for any vendor is simple. Does the regime raise its own inspections, with the evidence attached to each visit, and a defect loop from finding to fix to retest? Or does someone build the schedule by hand and hope?
Contractors: the gate is the feature
Every facilities manager has a story about the contractor whose insurance had lapsed three weeks before the ladder went up. The story ends well or it does not.
A CMMS built for Australian conditions holds the contractor's insurance, licences and inductions with their expiry dates, and stops the contractor accepting a job when any of them has expired. The gate has to be automatic. A reminder email is not a control.
Ask the vendor to show the gate stopping a job, live, in their demo.
Safe work has to travel with the job
Permits to work, isolations and safe work method statements are the paperwork that protects the person doing the work. If they live in a binder or a separate app, they detach from the job the moment things get busy.
Look for live permits with named approvers, isolations visible on one board, and a rule that nothing marked unsafe can start. Under the Work Health and Safety Act, officers have a personal due diligence duty under section 27, and a live permit board is the fastest evidence that the controls actually run.
Money is part of maintenance
A quote for a compressor should face three questions before anyone approves it. Is the unit under warranty? Has the same fault been repaired recently? How much life does the asset have left on the plan?
Most systems keep those answers in three places the approver never opens. A CMMS that puts them on the same screen as the approve button changes decisions, and a purchase order and invoice matching chain that books every dollar back to the asset means next year's budget is built from real history rather than last year's guess.
The field test
Take the vendor's phone app into your worst plant room. No signal, gloves on. Log a job, attach a photo, close it, walk out. Two things should be true: nothing is lost or silently overwritten, and the job visibly changes state when the sync really happens. A green tick before the save is a bug you will pay for later.
Hosting and the questions procurement will ask
Health, education and government buyers in Australia ask where the data is hosted, who can sign in and how, and whether every change keeps its author and time. Get those answers in writing. Australian hosting matters for more than sovereignty, it also decides whose support hours you get.
A short checklist to take into demos
- Trace one job end to end on one record.
- Watch a statutory regime raise its own inspection and attach evidence.
- Watch the contractor gate stop a job.
- Open a live permit board.
- See a quote face warranty, history and remaining life.
- Close a job offline and watch it arrive.
- Get hosting, sign in and audit trail answers in writing.
If a system passes all seven, the feature count will take care of itself.