Leveraging AI and Automation to Meet the Moment
As facilities engineering teams confront ever-increasing demands, they also have, at their fingertips, unprecedented access to data, information, and technology that can make their efforts more effective than ever—if they know how to use them.
Managing the latest advances to our advantage can seem overwhelming, but UG2’s Marcus Ellingson’s article for a recent issue of Buildings lays out a roadmap.
“AI and automation are already changing facilities operations, but their value is practical, not magical,” Marcus says. “The goal is not to replace the judgment of facility services professionals. It is to help stretched teams see what matters faster, reduce repetitive work, and focus limited time where it will have the greatest impact.”
Putting Tech to Work
Marcus identifies a range of issues contributing to the pressures of this pivotal moment: higher occupant expectations, aging infrastructure, fewer skilled technicians, and tighter budgets are among the current realities.
Fortunately, leveraging AI, analytics, and connected systems can help teams in a range of ways, from making sense of building alarms and spotting issues sooner to triaging problems and streamlining tasks.
Making Smarter Asset Decisions
The problem of competing needs and limited capital is not a new one. Facility leaders have always faced decisions on when to maintain, repair, replace, upgrade, or defer. Marcus explains how data can help prioritize projects and make better decisions around repairing versus replacing.
Perhaps most impactful is the role data can play when making the case for capital planning. Funding requests are hard to dismiss when backed by repair history, downtime risk, energy waste, and occupant impact.
Bridging the Knowledge Gap
Marcus reminds readers that 40% of the 12 million people in the skilled trades workforce are older than 45, less than 9% of people in the age range of 19-24 are entering the trades, and 400,000 U.S. trade jobs are unfilled.
As we work to preserve and pass on the expertise of experienced workers, we can use technology to capture information and build equipment histories. These strategies, in conjunction with cross-training and intentional knowledge transfer, will be critical in developing the next generation of talent.
Planning for the Long Term
It’s challenging to plan for the future effectively when our days are consumed by a continuous stream of urgent requests. Facility managers are forever juggling occupant complaints, equipment breakdowns and supply delays, not to mention staffing shortages, weather events and other emergencies.
Facility leaders need practical ways to stay responsive without letting long-term priorities fall off the list.
Marcus’s strategies include:
- Providing teams with clear guidance on prioritizing work based on safety, comfort, compliance, business impact, and asset risk.
- Looking for recurring complaints and patterns that might point to larger problems requiring a more permanent solution.
- Leaning into preventive routines, inspections, documentation, and clear procedures—especially when teams are stretched thin.
- Using partners strategically to extend your team or access specialized expertise.
- Ensuring that resilience, energy efficiency, sustainability, and capital planning are informing how projects are assessed, funded, and prioritized.
“The facility engineering organizations that thrive will not be the ones chasing every trend,” Marcus observes. “They will be the ones that modernize with purpose—protecting the fundamentals while building teams, systems, and processes that can keep pace with what comes next.”
Read the full article in Buildings.