3. Agility

Go from reactive to proactive services

Know where and when people are needed

The effectiveness of facilities management relies on your ability to react quickly and effectively to the varying demands from the buildings you manage. Agility is key. But to be agile, you need to know where resources are best directed at any given moment, and that requires processing a lot of data quickly and continuously.

You can have cameras covering every inch of your estate and reams of data on asset performance – but unless you can process that information quickly to identify and address issues, it’s of little use…

With computer vision analysing footage, sensor technology providing insight into building use and BI applications bringing all these insights together in one place, you can gain the visibility required to deploy resources when they’re needed most.

This leads to greater responsiveness, but it can also reduce the costs that rack up through unnecessary overprovisioning.

AI can be deployed to alert service teams to nearby spills, for instance. Or to diagnose faults so engineers arrive equipped to fix them – or even enable them to do so remotely. It’s this level of insight that allows facilities managers to actively plan services and streamline workflows – augmenting human effort and eliminating wasted time, costs and carbon.

Unlocking potential and empowering people

We believe this is where AI really shines. We see it as an investment in people, used to empower them to do better, more interesting and more fulfilling work – like data-driven and demand-led services.

It’s vital that everyone feels empowered by AI, from frontline colleagues to sector specialists. That way they can feel confident in leading the next era of facilities transformation.

To this end, our Digital Academy provides personalised training to improve digital literacy and give people the skills needed to harness our tech and make the most of AI. Similarly, our Facilities Transformation Hub is always exploring new opportunities and the practical ways new technologies can drive transformation.