CONTEXT (i)

The evolving role of facility management

A global impact

The facility management (FM) sector is experiencing a significant overhaul of practices, processes, tools and frameworks. Understandably, COVID-19 had a colossal impact on the FM industry, which led organizations to refocus their entire business operations.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only underscored the importance of health and safety, evolving regulations and compliance in FM, but it also provided a new wave of thinking regarding our working patterns and preferences, prompting organizations to rethink space utilization and adapt to remote and hybrid work environments.

In turn, the importance of technology integration and digital transformation (DT) is at the foundation of future growth. COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of technology-driven solutions in FM, as a means of overcoming the disruption of global supply chains, talent shortages and mitigating financial pressures.

The Global FM Impact Report 20232 highlighted several strategic imperatives for the FM industry (Figure 3). The industry dipped during the geopolitical chaos accelerated by the pandemic. It is now crucial for businesses to focus on organizational resilience, with “leading companies are playing defense on risk and also playing offence on growth,” a top priority for CEOs to consider moving forward.3

Figure 3: Global Strategic Imperatives for FM1

There are megatrends around technology integration and digitalization that will transform the FM industry. To overcome internal challenges, service providers need to come up with ready-made market solutions rather than waiting for clients to tell them what they want. FM organizations are encouraged to position themselves as leaders in clients’ organizational changes, rather than service providers. As such the demand for service integration (e.g., through Anything as a Service XaaS, and IT-OT integration) and value creation that maps to customers’ needs (e.g., through new ways of working).

Embracing Digital Transformation

In this transformative landscape, FM is evolving beyond its traditional functionality by leveraging digitization tools, acquiring skills and expertise in information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT).4

To remain competitive and deliver innovative FM services, facility managers must embrace digital transformation (DT). Experimentation with new technological tools enhances their capabilities to innovate, design novel FM solutions, and proactively meet client needs and expectations.4

However, caution must be taken as to how organizations expect FM teams to support or lead organization-wide specific DT efforts, which proves a challenge for many. DT impacts buildings’ role in value creation, affecting how FM companies organize operations and serve core organizations and end users. End users expect digitally enabled, individualized, quick and efficient services — expectations that FM organizations must mobilize and align to fast.5

The level of digital maturity across global regions is relatively consistent in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, with Africa and South America showing a lower level of advancement (Figure 4). South America is the least digitally mature region, with Chile being an anomaly, which appears to have the most stable economy.6

Figure 4: Global Digital Maturity Trends6

In the more mature market regions, a focus on service innovation means that M&A activity will shift from service expansion, geography and economies of scale, to acquiring technologies and new skills.

Case study: AI and BIM – where does FM fit?

Research shows that one of the most significant challenges for applying AI in FM is that facility managers waste a large percentage of their time on non-productive tasks, such as visualizing models, searching and validating different pieces of information, primarily because of a lack of information support.7 The key headlines of the research are:

Many of the existing facility management systems are totally disjointed. Some companies provide one system, but most of these systems have issues when interfacing with each other.

Thus, what tends to happen is that facility managers often must look after many standalone systems and somehow become experts at all these different systems. That often causes lots of inefficiency and working processes to fail.

The research emphasizes that a commitment by key FM stakeholders is needed toward integrating digital technologies, adopting new processes and a clear focus on efficiently managing during the building life cycle.7

The research concludes with a plea for more research to solve interoperability issues between software formats and software generations used in FM phases.

2 Tucker, M (2024) The Global FM Impact Report 2023: A Critical Review, FMJ, May/June, available here http://fmj.ifma.org/may-june-2024?m=30261&i=821227&p=1&ver=html5

3 McKinsey & Company, “What matters most? Six priorities for CEOs in turbulent times,” 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-live/webinars/what-matters-most-six-priorities-for-ceos-in-turbulent-times 4 N. Atta and C. Talamo, "Digital Transformation in Facility Management (FM). IoT and Big Data for Service Integration," in Digital Transformation of the Design, Construction and Management Processes of the Built Environment, Springer Open, 2020, pp. 267-278.

5 IFMA, “The Convergence: Managing Digital Risk and FM's Role in Protecting Digitizing Buildings,” 2023. [Online]. Available: https://ifma.foleon.com/white-paper/cybersecurity/

6 Tucker, M (2024) The Global FM Impact Report 2023: A Critical Review, FMJ, May/June, available here http://fmj.ifma.org/may-june-2024?m=30261&i=821227&p=1&ver=html5 .

7 Pedral Sampaio, R.; Aguiar Costa, A.; Flores-Colen, I. A Systematic Review of Artificial Intelligence Applied to Facility Management in the Building Information Modeling Context and Future Research Directions. Buildings 2022, 12, 1939. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings12111939

International Facility Management Association (IFMA) supports over 24,000 members in 136 countries. Since 1980, IFMA has worked to advance the FM profession through education, events, credentialing, research, networking and knowledge-sharing.