I've been studying for the IFMA CFM exam for 14 weeks and I'm running out of steam on the Operations & Maintenance domain. It's the largest domain at roughly 23% of the exam and my practice scores there are sitting around 58%. Everything else — Finance, Project Management, Leadership — I'm scoring 70-75% on. I'm a facilities manager mostly on the administrative side so the mechanical engineering content feels foreign.
I'm doing about two hours a day and taking a full 180-question practice exam every weekend. My overall scores are in the 66-68% range. There's no official published passing score for the CFM but general consensus seems to be around 60-65% given scaled scoring. If you're using a good CFM practice test resource the question style is pretty representative of what shows up on exam day.
One thing I've noticed is the CFM exam leans on scenario-based questions and the FM competency model rather than pure recall. Exam is in three weeks — should I drop to targeted O&M drilling or keep doing full-domain practice?
Your read on the scenario-based format is correct. For O&M focus on understanding when to escalate, when to contract out, and how to prioritize work orders based on criticality. Those judgment calls show up constantly throughout that domain.
The 60-65% passing threshold estimate is roughly right based on what I've seen in the IFMA community. Scaled scoring means you can't rely on a fixed percentage target though. Aim for 70%+ to give yourself a real buffer.
Three weeks out, go targeted. Full practice exams are more valuable earlier to identify gaps. At this stage you know your gaps — address them directly. Also make sure you understand LEED and ENERGY STAR benchmarking metrics. Sustainability questions pop up more than most people expect.
I passed my CFM last fall with a 73% on practice exams and felt comfortable on test day. The actual exam felt slightly easier than the harder commercial practice sets I was using. Finish strong on O&M and don't let it shake your confidence in the domains where you're already solid.