In facilities management and operations today, organizations face challenges that hinder operational efficiency and decision-making:

• Siloed building systems, networks, and data make it difficult to gain easy access to quality data for a comprehensive view of facility performance and prevent proactive decision-making.

• Lack of contextualized and synthesized data inhibits predictive analytics, trending performance, benchmarking, and accessible and timely actionable insights.

• The high cost and difficulty in collecting and maintaining high-quality data sets prohibits efficient operations and the ability to objectively measure improved performance.

• Manual processes and disjointed workflows result in time-consuming and error-prone tasks, reducing productivity and data quality.

• A reactive approach to maintenance and operations means issues are addressed only after they occur, leading to increased downtime, added repair costs, and diminished asset value.

• Paper-based documentation and compliance reporting add additional administrative burdens, increase risk, and hinder auditability.

• Suboptimal resource allocation and inefficient service request management slow down operations and increase cost to serve.

These challenges can be addressed through a digital transformation journey to integrate building systems, digitize assets and documentation, automate processes, aggregate data, improve data quality and analytics, and continually inform and optimize strategies. With this digital framework in place, organizations can leverage innovative technology and advanced data sets to train data models, deriving the required insights to intelligently manage their facilities.

Organizations have a lot to balance—they’re managing a hybrid work style, tracking return-to-office efforts, accounting for changing regulations, driving progress toward decarbonization goals, facing extreme weather events, and managing costs, all while providing a safe, comfortable, and healthy environment to attract, retain, and maximize the productivity of their employees. They’re looking for a way to manage their workspaces that adapts to the needs of their workforce and aligns to the success, goals, and objectives of their company.

Our dynamic approach provides a responsive and proactive way to manage facilities and their assets by supplementing traditional data sets with real-time data to monitor, optimize, and action operations and continually inform strategy throughout the commercial real estate lifecycle.

This dynamic approach isn’t for all buildings or assets within your portfolio. It’s best suited for those considered critical for business continuity and when the use cases and investment are justified.

Think of a doctor’s treatment plan for two patients, one with Type 1 diabetes, the other with Type 2. Type 2 can often be managed with diet, exercise, and, if needed, frequency-based glucose monitoring via finger pricks. That applies to Type 1 as well, but those patients often need a more rigorous treatment plan, including continuous glucose monitoring, insulin injections or an insulin pump for managing blood sugar levels. The goal is to improve the quality of life of the patient with the best health management strategy.

The same approach could be used to manage buildings. For example, a building you plan to exit in 24 months would be managed differently from a building critical to your business or one that’s revenue-generating. You’d manage your back office differently than your headquarters. How you maintain and manage assets within those buildings also differs; a low criticality asset, like lighting or a printer, is different than a high criticality asset, like servers or power backup equipment in a data center where uptime is paramount. The plan must adhere to the criticality of the building or assets in the same way medical treatment adjusts to the needs of the patient.