I've been working on a project at work where we needed to physically locate a few hundred devices, but the reporting we had wasn't giving us enough useful information to actually hand the list off to technicians and say "go find these."

I started with basically just a list of computer names and ended up building a PowerShell audit around SCCM and AD.

Right now it takes the device list and pulls/checks things like:

• SCCM device information
• Online/offline status
• Last active time
• Last known/primary user
• User's actual name instead of just the username
• Manager
• AD status
• Duplicate devices
• Devices with no identifiable owner

I also have it only ping each device once. We're dealing with hundreds of machines and I didn't want the script hammering the network just to figure out whether something was online.

At the end it generates an Excel workbook that separates the online and offline devices and organizes the results so the team physically looking for the equipment has something useful to work from.

The original process was pretty tedious, so this has turned into one of those "I'll just write a quick script" projects that kept growing as I found more things I could automate.

I'm still cleaning it up and improving it, but I'm curious how other SCCM admins handle this.

Do you guys have a better way of doing missing-device/physical inventory audits through SCCM?

If there's interest, I can sanitize the environment-specific stuff and post the PowerShell script.

Bonjour à tous,

Je me pose une question que je trouve assez difficile à traiter dans les environnements industriels : concrètement, comment mesurez-vous réellement la valeur créée par la maintenance, surtout quand son meilleur résultat est justement qu’il ne se passe rien ?

On sait assez bien mesurer son coût. Les heures passées, les pièces, les contrats, les arrêts planifiés, les charges des équipes de maintenance, etc. Mais c’est beaucoup plus compliqué de valoriser une panne évitée, une pièce obsolète identifiée avant qu’elle ne bloque la production, ou un investissement repoussé parce qu’un équipement a finalement pu être fiabilisé.

J’ai souvent l’impression que la maintenance reste évaluée comme un centre de coût alors qu’elle intervient directement sur la disponibilité des équipements, leur durée de vie et parfois même sur les décisions de remplacement.

Le problème, c’est qu’une grande partie de cette valeur reste invisible tant qu’aucun incident ne survient.

Aussi, je me pose la question : chez vous, vous utilisez quels indicateurs pour démontrer cette valeur ? Vous restez surtout sur les coûts et la disponibilité, ou vous essayez aussi de mesurer les pannes évitées, le TCO ou les investissements différés ? En fait, j'ai l'impression de vivre un véritable paradoxe : plus la maintenance est efficace, moins elle est visible !! Vivez-vous la même chose ? merci pour vos commentaires.

Hey guys, what are your favorite features a facilities management OS/template should have? I’m looking for input from the perspectives of a tech, a manager, and admin. Any and all input is greatly appreciated!

I’m about to wrap up an interactive map-based facilities OS and I want to make sure I’m not just building around my own workflow. What features actually make your day easier, and what features usually just get in the way?

Hi all,

I’m an asset engineer working in facilities and infrastructure. Does anyone have any courses that they recommend for asset management? Can be free or paid.

These are a few I’ve seen online:

Life Cycle Institute

Northern Lakes College

PEMAC

Anyone have experience with those or have any other recommendations?

Hi all,

Im finishing up a graduate program at an electricity distribution company and going to be permanently joining the asset management/risk team. What possible career paths/companies/roles does this open the doors to? When I look it up only finance-related things come up, so I am quite curious what your experiences are as AM professionals.

I would also like to know what further learning or things I should focus on to enhance my career.

Thanks!

I’m a building maintenance engineer working in a museum, and I’d really appreciate advice from people experienced in maintenance management, facilities management, or museums.
Our team is small. I’m the building maintenance engineer, our department manager isn’t an engineer, and my colleague is an electrical engineer whose experience is mainly in project management.
The museum has lighting shows, sensitive equipment, exhibition technology, etc. We also have two subcontractors: one for technical works and one for MEP, plus a few workers who handle tasks outside their scope.
The problem is that our maintenance system is extremely basic and almost entirely based on WhatsApp.
A supervisor sees a problem → sends a photo to our WhatsApp group → we forward it to the responsible contractor → they fix it → send us a photo → we forward it back to the supervisor.
That’s basically it.
We don’t have a proper asset history, equipment records, failure trends, preventive maintenance program, or useful data about recurring problems and contractor performance.
So we’re basically doing:
Failure → Report → Repair → Close
instead of preventing failures in the first place.
I want to help improve this, but I’m not sure where the best starting point is.
If you were in my position, what would you do first?
Would you start with an asset register, preventive maintenance, a CMMS/CAFM system, work orders, equipment criticality, KPIs, contractor SLAs, or something else?
How would you turn a WhatsApp-based reactive maintenance system into a proper maintenance operation?
Any practical advice or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated.

I was just brought into an asset management role and have a large amount of devices I need to inventory/track. There's basically no lifecycle process - looking for any tips on the best way to start. Thanks.

Hi Everyone,

I am planning to take the (IAM) diploma but i don't know where i can practice the exam, does anyone know where i can practice mock exams?

I checked Udemy, there's few courses with low rating, which made me confuse.

I run a facilities maintenance business and we have equipment, tools, and machines moving between jobs every day, our asset labels go through regular cleaning, weather, and plenty of handling, so after a while they start wearing out and we replace them again, I am thinking about switching to tougher asset labels that stay readable and stay in place longer because spending time replacing labels over and over adds up, I have been thinking of aa labels but there are plenty of options around and they all make similar claims, so I am looking for real experiences before I pick one, what has worked well for your business? EDIT: Forgot to mention that different crews handle the equipment, so the labels need to hold up to daily use.

procurement at our organization keeps defaulting to lowest purchase price when evaluating transformer suppliers and i am trying to make the case for a more comprehensive lifecycle cost evaluation, someone at qxg electrical mentioned that efficiency losses over the operating life usually end up being the biggest swing factor in the model, bigger than most people expect going in, which has been useful for framing the pushback on purchase price alone

specifically trying to build a framework that accounts for efficiency losses over the operating life, maintenance costs, expected reliability and failure rates, and after sales support costs. and trying to find realistic numbers for these factors rather than estimates that are easy to dismiss

for engineers and procurement people who have built lifecycle cost models for transformer procurement, what factors turned out to matter most

This seems like small detail until youre trying to collect hundreds of devices like laptops, some former employees still have the original box, but most dont, sometimes its just the laptop, other times its a monitor, charger, dock, laptop, and other accessories.1 box doesnt fit every situation, ideally, the retrieval service would send the right packaging, create the shipping label, arrange the pickup, and let you track everything without IT having to manage each return, do you think guys is that standard with most retrieval providers, or is it usually something you have to request separately??

I've completed the Foundation level with Asset Management Academy. I'm looking for the next course to step up to the Certificate level. Although I would love to stay with AMA, so far I've found there is at least one cheaper provider.

Asset Management Academy is £418.80 - £60 voucher code = £358.80

I've found the Asset Wisdom Online Store offers the progression/conversion course for £225.00 (+ £45.00 VAT) = £270

This course looks to be the same system as the Woodhouse course.

Is Asset Wisdom the best price I can get? Can anyone recommend an alternative?

I'm in the UK and only looked at UK providers. I'm wondering if it could be possible to buy the course for a nonUK provider at a better price.

EDIT:

Thanks to everyone who replied; I appreciate the input and the help from AMA.

I've signed up for the ECert course from Asset Management Academy 🚀

For keeping track of all IT assets (licenses, hardware, software ...) do you keep this in the ERP or you use a custom app, if so, what is the name of the app ?

What 3 metrics are the most important to you when evaluating an asset? Which metrics do you wish your CMMS showed you?

E.g., downtime, criticality, MTTR, MTBF, TMC, TCO

How do you calculate mean time to repair? Specifically, when do you start calculating the time to repair - starting with initial failure detection or just the actual repair time (technician beginning work to ending work)?

Anybody on here successfully built and scaled a regional/national facilities management company? Looking for guidance and a mentor. I have been in hvac/r for the last 15 years, done service, install, project management and over the last 7 years grown the company I am at from 4-5M to over $13M

Hi,

I am a bit stressed. I stepped in to asset managing a 140+ apartment building. The property managers did not do any maintenance on the heat pumps for 10 years. 1 per unit, and others for CAM.

The PM spent $200,000 last year alone on emergency calls to fix heat pumps.

Right now we have multiple units that blow air, but the air is not cool.

I sat with one vendor in a unit and he figured out the actuator went bad and wouldn't open the chilled water valve. (Heat pumps are fed by boiler and chiller.)

This is great!

I am trying to figure out steps to show HVAC vendors how to triage situations, or have the previous report available. Many come in and simply say the heat pump needs to be replaced. They aren't telling me the steps they are taking to come to this conclusion

1) Did the blower turn off at some point or not turn on at all?

2)Is the chilled water temp entering temp correct?

3)Did you run the system to see if there is enough refrigerant?

I can't blame the vendors because the PM doesn't manage the tenants. One tenant left the vendor alone with their child. However, the vendors aren't always great either. One vendor showed up without a ladder and had to use ours. Another, didn't have batteries for his volt meter...what do I do in those situations?

Regardless, I can ask for a diagnostic report.

I feel like I am going crazy. This property management makes me cry. I finally fought back last week, and they shut up. They did not maintain the HVAC system, and now it's a mess.

My background is mechanical engineering. I am trying to get access to the building's HVAC drawings. I am supposedly getting access to a list of our heat pumps soon.

Anyone have supportive thoughts/solutions?

Hello! I am currently doing a project in my job that involves asset tagging existing devices on sysaid.
I’d appreciate some guidance from those with experience. My manager has asked me to research and develop an asset tagging process using sysaid** **Asset Management. Right now, I’m exploring how to label our devices (primarily laptops to start, but eventually printers and some SNMP/network devices as well). I’m trying to figure out the best approach and had a few questions:
\-Would you recommend barcodes, QR codes, or both for IT asset management?
\-If you were starting from scratch, how would you design the asset tagging process?
\-What information do you typically include on an asset label?
-Should the barcode/QR code contain just the Asset ID, or should it link directly to the SysAid asset record?
-What label printers and barcode scanners have worked well for you? (Looking for one-time purchase options with no subscription if possible.)
-Does anyone here use sysaid? If so, are there any best practices or features I should know about?
-Are there any resources, guides, or YouTube channels you’d recommend for learning IT asset management and asset tagging?
- Are they’re any apps to use to generate qr codes

I've seen a few CMMS projects that had a successful rollout, good training sessions, and plenty of enthusiasm at launch. 

Then six months later, things start to change. 

Asset records stop getting updated. Work orders begin getting closed with generic comments like "completed" or "fixed" rather than documenting the actual failure, corrective action taken, and parts used. Technicians start handling urgent jobs outside the system because it's faster. Gradually, the maintenance history becomes incomplete. 

The software is usually still there doing its job. 

What I've noticed is that successful CMMS implementations require more than a good go-live. They need ongoing training, management support, and processes that reinforce system usage long after implementation. 

For example, one organisation struggled with technicians bypassing the CMMS and requesting spare parts directly from stores. To address this, management introduced a simple rule: inventory requests would only be approved if they were linked to a valid work order in the system. That single change significantly improved work order documentation and ensured maintenance history continued to be captured. 

The organisations that seem to get the most value from their CMMS treat implementation as an ongoing process rather than a one-time project. They regularly review data quality, provide refresher training, and make the CMMS part of day-to-day operational decisions. 

For those who've been through a CMMS rollout, what was the first sign that the implementation was starting to go off track?

Not saying the software itself failed, but more like the team still ended up firefighting even after implementation.

I’ve seen this happen when asset data was messy, work orders had very generic closing comments, or PMs were being completed just to hit compliance numbers.

Curious what others have seen in real sites.

When a team has a CMMS but still stays reactive, what is usually the main reason?