Report explores current state of FM technology

Sourcing the right technology is becoming increasingly crucial for facility managers who oversee understaffed teams while facing more work orders. In JLL’s latest State of Facilities Management Technology report, software automation, preventive maintenance and innovative technologies are presented as viable options to boost efficiency in various building types.

Among the nearly 300 FM professionals who participated in a survey for the report, the majority said they need more visibility into the effectiveness of completed work and require actionable insights to drive better decisions. There is also a significant focus on risk and compliance, while the economy and technology are creating more disruption within spaces.

Meanwhile, FMs said they are also working with more constricted budgets, overseeing more facilities with fewer managers and a smaller labour force, and working with tighter margins for service providers.

“There is so much more we need to do and we are all being forced to do that with less,” Tim Bernardez, global head of workplace management technologies at JLL, said during an online discussion earlier this year,

Jason Noorian, vice-president of asset management at restaurant company Brinker International, shared a few challenges. With the pandemic fueling FM turnover, newer managers might be less savvy. Creating an “operations ownership mindset” has been an obstacle to overcome. It has also been tricky obtaining good vendors who are often overworked. Sourcing new equipment also takes longer, so being proactive to reduce operational disruption is key.

These challenges inevitably impact day-to-day decision making. Noorian stressed the importance of having a strong support system. “We need to be experts in the facilities so we can train and ensure our operators know about the equipment,” he said. “Some of them have anxiety about touching a piece of equipment or changing a filter—things that maybe in the past were common knowledge are not there and the fear of breaking something keeps them more paralyzed.”

Adopting technology to help understaffed FM teams and cost savings

Adopting new technology often comes with hesitancy. “You need to have a growth mindset and think about facilities as a profit generator not only a cost to the business,” said Noorian. “We have over 6000 preventative maintenance tickets that go out every three months. Having someone do that by themselves would take an army of people. Because we have a system that is automated we can put the scope and detail on there with one person clicking a button and getting that out to everyone.” Automation also helps him understand which vendors are performing well.

Max Serrao, owner and COO of CFM Associates Inc., which specializes in commercial construction and facilities maintenance, says it’s been more difficult sourcing both service providers and in-house technicians, but having technologies in place to make jobs easier has made a difference, for instance, auto notifications for work orders that are both reactive and proactive is a tool that creates efficiency by assigning projects based on priority levels.

Software automation can drive efficiency and scale. In the report, the top outcomes FM professionals said they desire from work order management software are eliminating repetitive tasks that impede high-priority projects. They also want analytics and insights to drive FM performance, gains in productivity from technicians using a powerful mobile app, ensuring work is completed and complies with regulations, and flexible configurable workflows for specific industries.

The top three areas they said their operations are most primed for automation are tracking work order progress, invoices and payment approvals and reporting.

Data capture in CMS has been used to drive critical decisions, especially when it comes to repair versus replacement, said Noorian. With his current system, he is able to see the repair history, its asset life and if the equipment is under warranty to prevent wasteful spending.

Asset tagging

Many on the panel believe in the future of asset tagging despite experiencing push-back from clients. “I think it’s something we’re going to ultimately adopt and everyone will,” says Serrao.

For Noorian, asset tagging is helping with decision-making. “Our desire is to have a holistic view of our asset management strategy and to do that we need to have assets tagged.”

It also eliminates pain points related to traditional methods. “Sometimes it might take three back-and-forths between a vendor and a manager to get the right serial number and model number, to take pictures they can actually see so the tradesperson can have the right equipment or part to help repair,” he further explained. “Asset tagging takes all that out of the question. We also want to make sure we are being better with repair versus replace decisions. The tag has all the history where the manager, in real time, can understand the best route to take.”

Facility managers who use asset tagging are urged to think of the end goal. Bernardez says having a strategy is key—one that considers what is being extracted by collecting all the data to repair and replace. “There are some really cool technologies that can augment the data you collect from asset tagging where you can begin to use AI to pull back manuals and all sorts of relevant information to help those who are working on the asset be more proficient [and] have more knowledge,” he added.

Artificial intelligence driving insights

Many facility managers expressed their interest in exploring artificial intelligence (AI) during the discussion; however, while some are actively implementing solutions, many others haven’t seriously considered it. Many cannot figure out how to buy-in as an organization and use AI to change the trajectory of their business.

Likewise, in the JLL report, more than 59 per cent of survey respondents said they have no AI strategy but are keen to learn more. Nearly 16 per cent were skeptical about its infancy state, while about 10 per cent were already using AI on a regular basis. A smaller group doesn’t see any value at all in facilities management.

Scott Boekweg, product management lead at JLL, talked about how AI can be leveraged to automate and streamline key processes in FM operations, particularly with predictive maintenance and work order scheduling.

“With AI power-driven predictive maintenance you can anticipate when equipment failures are going to happen,” he said. “This not only reduces the downtime but it also prevents the overspending on unnecessary maintenance.”

At least one global elevator company is already using AI-powered predictive maintenance systems. “They are collecting and analyzing data from their sensors and predicting failures before they occur,” he said. “It’s actually reduced their elevator downtime by up to 50 per cent and extended the lifespan of those elevator components.”

Scheduling systems that use AI can intelligently assign work orders based on urgency, the verbiage in the work order, the specialty, the technician’s skill level and availability, and the geography for route optimization. “It’s like having a super efficient dispatcher working 24/7,” said Boekweg, pointing to a university campus that has reduced its response times by 20 per cent with the system, while improving its operations and maintenance.

Another up-and-coming technology is AI vision systems.“Basically, its able to analyze video and pictures and be able to see the assets that sit within them. You can take these images and video feeds and in seconds pull down the specific equipment. Boekweg has seen early applications that can be used for tagging equipment virtually using a smartphone. Technicians can also use that same app to find the equipment they need by simply tapping on it.

“We’ve seen this really take flight in some adjacent industries such as warehousing where they’re using computer vision AI to identify and categorize millions of items rather quickly instead of having to barcode and do manual data entry,” he noted. “I suspect we’ll see more of that as we continue to leverage AI.”

AI Chatbots and AI Analysis and also help FMs optimize resources and improve operational efficiency. Boekweg explained how AI Chatbots are the frontlines of solving complex problems and inquiries and understand FM jargon. “It really helps FMs to interact with their asset management system, to analyze real-time sensor data, maintenance records, and equipment specifications to provide the insights on the asset help and also look at vendor performance.

While AI clearly leads to opportunities, he doesn’t foresee it replacing the important role facility managers hold; rather, learning specific AI tools will create more efficiency in the FM field. “It will help them do more with less, but there’s still the critical human skills—you need to be able to talk to customers and those doing work orders, and also do some complex problem solving. AI is not perfect, so you still need to know what is really going on in the facility.”

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