Top 5 Predictions for Facilities Management 2019

Looking back, don’t you realise that 2018 has been phenomenal?

Be it France’s whopping victory in the 2018 FIFA world cup or the nail-biting recovery of the junior football team players trapped inside Thai cave, 2018 has had its fair share of highs and lows.  

Almost like a commercial movie jam-packed with action, we saw royal wedding and thanksgiving, infinity war and the war against inequality, all back to back overwhelming us with contrasting emotions.

Closer home, in the built world, it has been no less momentous. The facilities management community became more encouraging towards technology, IoT in buildings got even bigger limelight and leading investment companies began to bet big on CRE technologies.

There has been equally overwhelming emotions here, but all unanimously pro-digital transformation ?

As 2018 bids goodbye, a lot of problems are still unsolved in buildings and a lot many things up for change – from real estate to workplace to technology trends.

But hey that’s a happy place to be in, because every problem/change is an opportunity to even better optimise facilities in real-time, for us at Facilio and all you out there ?

So what do you think is changing? Which of the latest trends will reign 2019 and going forward in facilities management?

Here’s the tl;dr version if you are in a hurry to take on 2019!

1. Experience-first facilities is leading the transformation. The real estate+FM is no longer about managing buildings. It’s a way of delivering delightful experience in buildings.
2. IoT in buildings gets more powerful. With gold mines of data available in existing automation, the time is ripe to fully connect buildings and unlock ultra efficiency in real-time.
3. FM to focus on value creation, not just cost-savings. Empowered with technology, facility teams would shift focus a lot more towards creating value-driven over cost centric services.
4. Growing demand for unified, portfolio-wide insights. CREs increasingly want to take the driver seat to controlling building performance, across portfolio using a single central source of action.
5. Predictive + optimised + sustainable – future smart buildings. The FM tech industry is betting high on predictive diagnostics and futuristic optimisation of facilities + sustainable performance.

But don’t take our word on it, the community is all talks about technology and real-time solutions driving the future of experience-driven facilities.

1) Experience-first facilities is leading the transformation.

2018 saw a huge shift in focus from service oriented to experience-driven management of buildings.

The success of co-working spaces and real estate boom has rendered the market hyper competitive leaving commercial buildings but to have occupant experience as an edge over others.

Workplace experience greatly influences productivity and wellbeing of employees and so businesses now seek a delightful environment to work in and not just well-maintained spaces.

According to a recent survey, 60% of heads of real estate believe improving the comfort, wellbeing and overall experience for tenants is the most important objective for the next 3 years.

Quite so, the most urgent thing to do in 2019 for facility teams would be to evolve and empower yourselves to deliver experience as a service.

2) IoT in buildings gets more powerful.

The power of internet era, more than anything else, is that you have data at your fingertips and information obtained on the go.

Buildings are late to this party but better late than never. IoT and cloud based technologies picked up fast this year and 2019 is only going to get more connected, real-time and so much smarter.

Over next few years, 44% of real estate strategies will be primarily towards improving connectivity and data availability in buildings, in real-time.

Barack Obama was once quoted saying ‘Internet is not a luxury, it’s a necessity’. Not long before the same would be true for Internet of Things in buildings because 2019 will see the FM community and building owners capitalise on the data from existing infrastructure and automation systems and shift towards contextual, real-time facilities.

3) FM to focus on value creation, not just cost-savings.

With people at its core, facilities management is one of the largest man power reliant industries.

While it will undoubtedly continue to be so, the role of technology in empowering the facility team with valuable insights on the go is huge.

This helps in not only identifying problems at break light speed and fast track troubleshooting, but also enables FMs and CREs to create competitive value-add tenant services.

Commercial buildings are more likely to make 5x more investments in smart building and facility optimisation technologies in 2019.

With a unified FM technology on top of IoT-enabled real-time data, you could make your workforce, assets and energy smarter and achieve the best building performance.

Clearly, every sign out there points to one thing – technologies like IoT and ML are set to transform how buildings will be managed in future, for good.

4) Growing demand for unified, portfolio-wide insights.

For long, heads of real estate and building owners have been working out of paper-based reports and stats at their tables fumbling with numbers that offer little to no portfolio-wide insights. With more and more millennials wanting to be in smarter buildings in next 5 years, building owners can no longer risk being outdated or blindfolded by piecemeal tools. Say 35% of Owners – ‘We want an integrated solution that can offer insights for all our portfolio needs at one place’.

With buildings wanting to take control of performance in real-time, single dashboard for all buildings, that has every data and insight across portfolio at stone’s throw is the next big thing!

5) Predictive + optimised + sustainable – future smart buildings.

On an average, three out of five assets are replaced 10% earlier in their life cycle due to unforeseen breakdowns in buildings.

Moreover frequent outages and troubleshooting in buildings cause discomfort among tenants reducing the overall retention rate. That is exactly why the FM tech industry is betting high on predictive diagnostics on top of historical data.

On analysing data and fault patterns from the past, ML based technologies can provide futuristic insights that can prevent problems before they occur and predictively manage your assets. 2019 and going forward, you need to go that extra mile and proactively manage your facilities.

No matter the changing trends in real estate and technology, one thing that has remained constant through the years and will continue to be is the tirelessly working FacMan community and their spirit to evolve with transformations in the built world.

To a resilient community improving the quality of life in buildings, one day at a time, a very happy and prosperous 2019 you all ?

At Facilio, we’re continuously rethinking the way buildings are managed – shifting traditional, tactical facilities management towards smarter, predictive facilities experience.

We’re on a mission to help the built environment thrive towards continuous sustainability by empowering people, machines, and buildings achieve high levels of efficiency.