Why CircuitMap

Compared with what you do today

Q: Our team will not keep it updated. That is what killed the last system.

A record dies when the smallest edit is expensive. Circuit entry runs as a survey with auto-numbered ways, bulk edit sets one value across every circuit, the phone works offline, and QR labels mean the update happens at the board. Teams that make it stick fold it into contractor sign-off.

Q: We already pay for a CAFM system. Why another subscription?

They answer different questions. A CAFM system knows a work order was raised and closed; it does not know what a given way actually feeds, or what else goes off when you isolate it.

Q: Is this not just a document store with a floor plan?

No. The value is the record itself: circuits linked to rooms and assets, coverage on the plan, three-phase ways spanning L1 to L3, device and conductor detail per way, aligned floors for drill-throughs, and compliance dates. Documents hang off that record rather than being the point of it.

Q: What if you go out of business?

Records export in standard formats at any time, the install is single-tenant on your own server so there is no hosted service to switch off, and a perpetual licence keeps running whether or not maintenance is renewed.

Q: We have almost no existing documentation. Is that a problem?

It is the normal starting point. A photo of a paper plan is enough to begin a floor, and circuit entry is built around one engineer working a board at a time. Most teams have a first building usable in days.

CircuitMap puts every board and circuit on your own floor plans. Every alternative on this page is the right answer for somebody. Here is where each one works, where each one fails, and where we would tell you not to buy from us.

The drawing cupboard
A spreadsheet
Your CAFM system
A full re-survey

Side by side

The same eight questions, answered two ways

No ticks, no crosses. Just what actually happens in each case. You will recognise the left-hand column.

How it goes today

How it goes with CircuitMap

Someone asks what feeds a socket
Find the folder, find the right sheet, hope it was updated after the 2019 refit, then switch things off to be sure.
Search the room and read the answer: board, way, protective device, what else is on it. DB1 · Way 4 · 32A RCBO
A contractor finishes a small works order
They leave site. The drawing is marked up in biro if you are lucky, and the schedule inside the board door quietly stops matching the board.
They edit the circuit before they leave site — one screen, one question at a time — so the record is right the moment the job is.
You need the schedule for the board door
Pay someone with a CAD licence to redraw it, or photocopy the last one and write on it again.
Press DB Schedule, print A4 landscape. Laid out to BS 7671:2018+A4:2026 Reg 514.9.1, generated from the live record.
An engineer needs details at the board
Ring the office, wait, describe the board over the phone, get sent a PDF that will not open on a phone.
Scan the QR label on the board door. Circuits, photos, documents and notes, on the phone, in the cupboard.
The person who knew the building leaves
The knowledge goes with them. The next person spends about two years building it back up.
It was never in one head. It is in the record, with every change dated and a name against it.
An EICR or insurance inspection is due
Someone remembers. Or they do not, and you find out from the renewal letter.
Due dates are colour-coded across your buildings, everything falling due in the next 45 days sits on one card, and a daily digest emails whoever owns it.
You are drilling through a slab
Two plans, two scales, a tape measure and a bit of faith.
Floors are lined up to the same footprint, so a point marked on one plan shows where it lands on the floor above and below.
IT asks where the data goes
A shared drive nobody owns, three inboxes, and a spreadsheet on somebody's laptop.
Your own server. Single tenant. No outbound connection needed, and every export is in an open format you can take with you.

When you do not need CircuitMap

One small building, a twelve-way board, and the same person holding the keys for fifteen years? A spreadsheet is genuinely fine, and we would rather you kept it. CircuitMap starts to pay for itself at the second board, the second person or the second contractor. That is the point where the record stops being somebody’s memory and has to stand on its own.

The alternatives

What else you could sensibly do

Including the two cases where we would tell you to keep what you have.

The drawing cupboard

As-built drawings, the handover O&M pack, and the schedule taped inside the board door.

Where it works: It is free, it is already there, and on handover day it was right.
Where it fails: It has no way of telling you it is wrong. Every alteration since handover either made it into the pack or quietly did not, and nothing records which. Silent failure is the worst kind.

Keep it as history. Stop treating it as the current record.

A spreadsheet

One tab per board, kept up by whoever cares most.

Where it works: Genuinely fine for a small building with one board and one person. Cheap, portable, and anyone can read it.
Where it fails: It has no idea where anything is. It cannot show which rooms a circuit feeds, print a compliant schedule, or be scanned at the board — and it lives on one person's drive. There is no history either. The version from before last summer's works is gone.

The right answer until you have a second board, a second person or a second contractor.

Your CAFM or CMMS

Work orders, PPM schedules, asset registers, contractor management.

Where it works: It is the right tool for tracking work, and you should keep it. It is probably already part of how your team runs.
Where it fails: It tracks the work, not the building. Ask most CAFM systems which board feeds Room 214, or for a BS 7671 board schedule, or to show a circuit's coverage on a plan, and you are back in the drawing cupboard.

It sits alongside, not against. The CAFM ticket links out to the record; CircuitMap holds it.

A full M&E re-survey

Bring a consultancy in to walk the buildings and redraw everything.

Where it works: You get an accurate snapshot, produced by people who do this for a living. Sometimes it is exactly the right thing to buy.
Where it fails: A snapshot is all it is. The drift starts again the day they leave site, and in three years you are getting it quoted a second time. The deliverable is usually PDFs, which is where the last set went to die.

Survey once if you must, then keep it alive in something your own team can edit in a minute.

The clearest example

One board, two records

On the left, the schedule taped inside the door today. On the right, the one CircuitMap prints from the live record. Drag the handle.

Inside the board doorGenerated by CircuitMap

Drag to compare. Same board, same building — one of them is wrong, and nobody can tell which until they open it.

Objections

The five things people push back on

These come up on nearly every call, so they may as well be answered before it.

Ask us something harder →

Our team will not keep it updated. That is what killed the last system.

Right thing to worry about, and the only constraint that really matters. A record dies when the smallest edit is expensive. So circuit entry runs as a survey, one question at a time with ways auto-numbered; Add ways lays out a whole board of numbered ways in one action; bulk edit sets one value across every circuit at once; the phone works with no signal in a basement; and a QR label on the board door means the update happens at the board, not back at a desk that evening. Teams that make it stick fold it into contractor sign-off — the job is not finished until the record shows it.

We already pay for a CAFM system. Why another subscription?

Because they answer different questions. Your CAFM knows a work order was raised, assigned and closed. It does not know that Way 7 on DB-3F-01 feeds the comms room air conditioning, that the isolator is mislabelled, or that switching it off also drops the two offices behind it. That is the knowledge that makes the work order safe, and right now it lives in somebody's head.

Is this not just a document store with a floor plan?

No — documents are the least interesting part. The value is in the record itself: circuits linked to the rooms and assets they serve, coverage drawn on the plan, three-phase ways spanning L1 to L3 properly, protective device and conductor detail per way, floors aligned to a common footprint so a drill point can be traced through a slab, and compliance dates that raise themselves. Documents hang off all of that. They are not the point of it.

What if you go out of business?

Fair question to ask a small supplier, which is why the answer is built into the product rather than promised in a contract. Your records export in standard formats at any time. The install is single-tenant on your own server, so there is no hosted service for anyone to switch off. And a perpetual licence keeps running whether or not maintenance is renewed. Stop paying and you stop getting updates and support, not the software.

We have almost no existing documentation. Is that a problem?

It is the normal starting point, and it is easier than you would think. A photo of a paper plan is enough to begin a floor. After that the quickest route is one engineer, one board at a time, entering ways as they identify them — which is exactly what circuit entry was built around. Most teams have a first building usable in days, not months.

Judge it against your own building

Bring one floor plan to a 30-minute call. We will map a real board from your site on screen, and if it is not better than what you already have, we will say so.

Book a 30-minute demo Open the live demo

No pitch deck. No credit card. No follow-up sequence.