KAFD adopts IBM software to manage its smart-city assets

IBM says Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District, or KAFD, has adopted its Maximo software to manage the physical backbone of the district’s smart-city operations. The system is designed to keep a shared record of assets such as buildings and equipment, the maintenance they need, and the work done on them—important in a district where construction and day-to-day operations overlap. KAFD has also built a custom transition-management application on top of Maximo to handle a particularly awkward moment: passing a completed building, site, or piece of infrastructure from the construction team to the people who must run and maintain it. The app is registered in KAFD’s name with the Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property. The larger point is less about a new app than about turning handovers, which can scatter records and blur responsibility, into a managed operational process as the district expands.