Maintenance Matters Focus on: CMMS 12 | Plant & Works Engineering www.pwemag.co.uk August/September 2025 In the UK engineering sector, Computerised Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) have long been regarded as tools for organising work orders, tracking asset histories and managing spare parts. For decades, they operated in relative isolation, quietly fulfilling their administrative purpose. Over the past five years, the landscape has changed sharply. A CMMS is now expected to integrate seamlessly with a growing ecosystem of connected sensors, enterprise systems and analytics tools. It is no longer just a database; it is becoming the operational hub of maintenance strategy. Predictive maintenance relies on continuous streams of live data, often generated by IoT devices attached to machinery. Energy efficiency targets require coordination between maintenance teams, building management systems and sustainability reporting. Multi-site engineering operations cannot function effectively without shared platforms capable of drawing in data from disparate sources. Yet despite this clear need, integration is still one of the sector’s most persistent and costly sticking points. Many CMMS deployments underperform, and integration is often the root cause. While older, proprietary systems do create technical obstacles, the bigger problems are usually tied to governance, planning and human factors. Most UK engineering firms have built up a patchwork of legacy CMMS platforms, specialist monitoring software and enterprise resource planning systems, each adapted over the years to fit local workflows. When a modern CMMS is introduced, connecting it to this heterogenous network is rarely straightforward. Asset identifiers may be inconsistent, work order categories might not align, and in some cases the underlying data structures are fundamentally incompatible. Projects are also frequently managed as IT installations rather than operational transformations, leaving integration as an afterthought. By the time data mismatches and quality issues are discovered, budget and schedule pressures encourage “quick fixes” that fail to deliver lasting value. The outcome is often a CMMS that works in isolation but cannot support predictive analytics, real-time planning or automated reporting. The consequences are wide-ranging. Without integration, decision-making relies on incomplete or outdated information. Predictive maintenance cannot draw on the full picture of equipment performance, planning processes miss procurement or staffing data, and sustainability reporting depends on laborious manual extractions from multiple sources. Operationally, poor integration leads to duplicated data entry, heavier administrative workloads and growing mistrust in the system. When engineers perceive the CMMS as slow, inaccurate or irrelevant, adoption drops and the quality of information declines in a selfreinforcing cycle. As UK engineering operations modernise, CMMS platforms are expected to integrate seamlessly with IoT, enterprise and analytics systems. Done well, integration transforms maintenance from record-keeping to strategic insight. Achieving this demands planning, data standards, security awareness and phased delivery to unlock efficiency, reliability and competitive advantage. PWE reports. How smart CMMS integration is reshaping UK engineering
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