A work order is the record that authorizes and tracks a task in a building: what needs doing, where, for whom, at what priority, assigned to which engineer or vendor, with status from open to closed. In commercial property it usually begins as a tenant request and ends as a completed, sometimes billable, job.
Buildings run on work orders. A tenant reports a leak, an engineer inspects a rooftop unit, a vendor services an elevator: each is a work order with a start, an owner, and an end. The general definition at Wikipedia covers the manufacturing origin; in commercial property the record has a tenant on one end and, often, an invoice on the other.
Lifecycle in a commercial building
| Stage | Who | What is recorded |
|---|---|---|
| Request received | Tenant, by portal, email, phone, or app | Requester, location, description, timestamp |
| Acknowledged | Property team or operator | Time to first response begins the clock |
| Categorized and prioritized | Property team, by policy | Category, priority, chargeable or not |
| Assigned | Engineer or vendor | Assignee; vendor compliance status checked |
| In progress and completed | Assignee | Work done, parts, labour, photos |
| Verified and closed | Property team, with tenant confirmation | Completion time; tenant informed |
| Billed | Accounting | Chargeback to the tenant where the lease allows |
Two systems, one record
The work order lives in a CMMS when the work is asset maintenance, and in a tenant-facing platform when it begins as a request. Whichever product holds it, the point for operations is that the record has to carry the same fields wherever it lives, because the metrics come from the timestamps.
The step before the system
Most requests do not arrive in the system. They arrive as an email at 6 p.m., a call to the security desk, a message to a property manager's phone. Someone has to read them, decide what they are, and create the work order. That step is where response time is won or lost, and it is what the article on tenant request management with audit logs and routing sets out to specify. The vendor assigned at step four should also be checked against the building's vendor compliance list before the work starts, which is where the work order meets the certificate of insurance.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a service request and a work order?
A service request is what the tenant submits: a description of a problem. A work order is what the building creates from it: a categorized, prioritized, assigned task. Some systems treat them as one record with statuses; others keep the request as the tenant-facing view and the work order as the internal one.
What are the stages of a work order?
Received, acknowledged, categorized and prioritized, assigned to an in-house engineer or a vendor, in progress, completed, verified, closed, and where applicable billed to the tenant. Each stage carries a timestamp, which is what makes response and completion times measurable.
What should a work order record?
Requester and contact, location down to the suite or asset, category, priority, description, assignment, scheduled and actual times, parts and labour, vendor and its compliance status, tenant chargeability, completion notes, and the tenant's confirmation. Missing fields turn into unanswerable questions later.
How are work orders measured?
Time to acknowledge, time to complete, both by category and priority; open work by age; repeat requests by location; vendor performance against contract; and the share of chargeable work actually billed. Those are the metrics behind response-time benchmarks and tenant communication SLAs.