Industries

CMMS and asset finance for data centres

In short

Cohiva Control is a maintenance and asset management system suited to data centre operators who run critical cooling, UPS, generators and power distribution where uptime is non-negotiable and contractor access is tightly controlled. It combines an asset register, work orders, preventive maintenance, inspections and a hard contractor-compliance gate with native fixed-asset depreciation that posts journals to your accounting ledger. Everything sits in a database that is isolated per operator.

CMMS and asset finance for data centres

A data centre is a building whose entire purpose is to never stop. The compute is the visible part, but it sits on cooling, power and life-safety plant that has to run continuously, with maintenance done under strict change discipline so a routine job never becomes the cause of an outage. Cohiva Control is built for operators who run that kind of critical plant, and it joins the maintenance side to the finance side so the asset you service is the asset you depreciate.

The plant you depend on

A data centre runs a dense stack of critical infrastructure. Cooling comes from CRAC and CRAH units, chillers, pumps and the associated pipework, and it has to hold conditions without interruption. Power flows through UPS systems and their batteries, switchgear and power distribution, backed by standby generators that must start on a utility failure. Fire detection and suppression, leak detection, and the building management system that watches all of it complete the picture. Electrical work across this estate is licensed work, carried out by qualified persons, but the assets, their history and their scheduled maintenance all belong in your register.

In Cohiva Control every one of those is a registered asset with a stable identity. The register carries hierarchy, condition and lifecycle state, so you can model how the cooling and power systems relate and which assets sit beneath a critical parent. Each asset has its own immutable code you can put on a QR label, so a technician can scan it and see the full history and open work, and that code is never reused when an asset is transferred or disposed.

Maintenance matched to criticality

In a facility built around uptime, criticality drives everything. Cohiva Control lets you configure preventive maintenance and inspection frequencies per asset, so the cooling, UPS, generators and life-safety systems get the intensive routines their failure consequences justify. Schedules run on a time interval or a meter interval, generate work orders automatically without duplicates, and PM compliance is tracked against the schedule, which matters when missed maintenance on a critical system is a genuine risk rather than an inconvenience.

When work is done, the work order moves through a server-enforced state machine, from open to assigned, in progress, pending parts, completed and verified. Illegal jumps are rejected and every transition is written to an append-only history row, which fits the change-control and record discipline a data centre runs under.

Inspections that turn into action

Walk-rounds and condition checks of cooling, power and life-safety plant are part of daily operation. Cohiva Control inspection templates capture pass or fail checks, numeric readings, photos and signatures, and a failed item can raise a work order automatically, closing the loop between spotting a developing problem and acting on it well inside the warning window. Once an inspection is submitted it is versioned and immutable, so the record reflects what was actually observed.

A hard line on contractor compliance

Access to a data centre is controlled tightly, and the contractors who do work on critical plant must be exactly who they say they are, properly insured and inducted. Cohiva Control enforces it. A contractor whose public liability insurance, trade licence or site induction is expired, missing or unverified cannot be assigned to a work order. This is a hard block, not a reminder, with no override available even to an administrator. You configure the document set, including site inductions, and the system enforces it on every assignment, which helps you comply with your own access and contractor management controls.

Maintenance and depreciation in one place

Data centres are capital-intensive, and most maintenance tools leave the books to a separate fixed-asset register. Cohiva Control carries each asset through to native depreciation across six methods, straight-line, diminishing value, double declining balance, units of production, sum of years digits and AASB 16 for leases, with money held to the cent rather than as a floating point number. Each monthly run writes to an append-only depreciation ledger and can post the journal to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Cohiva Crunch. Because the same record drives both maintenance and finance, you are not reconciling two systems at year end. This is general information about how the product calculates depreciation, not accounting advice; confirm treatment with your finance team.

Built for Australian operators across sites

Cohiva Control is Australian-built and supports AASB 16 lease accounting, which matters when premises or plant sit on a lease. It is database per tenant, so each operator runs in an isolated database, and you can manage several facilities in the one platform. See how preventive maintenance and the contractor compliance gate work, the criticality analysis idea behind prioritising plant, and the related approach for healthcare and aged care.

Part of the Cohiva platform

Cohiva Control is part of the wider Cohiva platform. Finance teams connect to Cohiva Crunch for the general ledger and consolidation. You can see the whole platform at www.cohiva.app.

Frequently asked questions

What plant does Cohiva Control track in a data centre?
Any asset you choose to register, from CRAC units and chillers to UPS, batteries, generators, fire suppression, power distribution and building management plant. Each asset carries its own condition and maintenance schedule, and electrical work is carried out by licensed persons.
How does it support critical-asset uptime?
You can rank assets by criticality and configure intensive preventive maintenance and inspections on the cooling, power and life-safety systems whose failure is most costly, with schedules generating work orders on time or meter intervals without duplicates and PM compliance tracked against them.
How strict is the contractor compliance gate?
A contractor with expired, missing or unverified public liability insurance, a trade licence or a site induction cannot be assigned to a work order. It is a hard block at the system level with no override, which helps enforce the tight access and induction controls a data centre requires.
Does it keep a defensible work record?
Yes. Work orders move through a server-enforced state machine and every transition is written to an append-only history row, and inspections are versioned and immutable once submitted, which suits the change-discipline a data centre operates under.
Does it depreciate our capital plant?
Yes. Cohiva Control runs six depreciation methods including AASB 16 leases and posts the monthly journal to Xero, QuickBooks, NetSuite or Cohiva Crunch, so the asset you maintain is the asset you depreciate.