AI in Facilities Management

You’ve probably noticed the term popping up in headlines, blogs, and broadcasts for the past several years, but artificial intelligence is more than just self-cleaning vacuums and generative AI chatbots. It’s being integrated into technologies and structures across the built environment, shaping and enhancing routine processes that are often barely noticeable.

AI is also transforming facilities management. Today’s tools help facilities managers conserve resources, reduce wasted time, maximize uptime, and lower operational spend. AI in facilities management systems can take over time-consuming routine tasks, such as approving work orders, planning preventative maintenance, and tracking labor spend.

AI systems and tools primarily impact four key focus areas in facilities management: maintenance, energy management, security, and analytics. In this guide, you’ll learn about each and get tips on what steps your organization can take to improve operational efficiency with AI.

The Foundation: Data-Driven Facilities Management

Before you can begin leveraging AI in facilities management, your organization must prepare its maintenance data. Just as gasoline powers automobiles, data fuels AI systems. Consequently, digitally transforming your FM data lays the foundation for the latest AI solutions. Here’s what you need to know about digitizing your data and using it for data-driven decision-making.

Digitizing Your FM Program

Digitizing an FM program for integrating advanced AI algorithms and technologies often involves:

• Consolidating Facilities Management Systems: Using multiple building management systems leads to data fragmentation and increases the risk of waste. By migrating to a single system, you can eliminate data silos and associated waste.
• Eliminating Paper: Digitizing often begins with uploading paper-based historical data and maintenance schedules into a centralized database to increase visibility.
• Enabling Sensor Data Collection: Using Internet of Things (IoT) technology, equipment such as HVAC systems can transmit real-time data to a central system for continuous monitoring.
• Integrating Other Systems: Connecting your CMMS with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), inventory management systems, and other platforms provides AI with a rich dataset to drive analytics.

Modern facilities management software, such as ServiceChannel’s computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), plays an essential role in digitizing FM programs. Our platform acts as the single source of truth for the facilities ecosystem. It offers unprecedented, high-fidelity visibility into your operations, so you can finally get everyone on the same page and open the doors to AI adoption.

Turning Raw Data into Actionable Insights

Going digital will provide you with a wealth of raw data. Machine learning algorithms can then translate into new perspectives on operational efficiency, maintenance spend, lifecycle management, and more.

ServiceChannel’s platform provides data-driven insights to help you realize the full potential of every asset. With us, you have a partner who will help you experience the promises of IoT, such as zero asset downtime. You can stop chasing reactive maintenance and begin reaping the benefits of predictive maintenance.

4 Revolutionary AI Applications in Facilities Management

Artificial intelligence can support facility and building operations in many ways, and novel methods of leveraging AI continue to emerge as technology develops. Today, you’ll find organizations integrating AI to:

• Institute proactive maintenance measures
• Improve energy management
• Protect critical systems and assets
• Enhance decision-making processes

Continue reading to explore each of these critical aspects of AI in facilities management.

1. Predictive Maintenance and Equipment Management

Being a facilities manager can sometimes feel more like being a firefighter. Even after creating a preventive maintenance schedule, you may be investing too much time and energy putting out fires in the form of equipment failures. Unexpected breakdowns also lead to unpredictable spend and inefficient resource allocation.

Artificial intelligence in FM software can help you get back to the big picture. By analyzing and interpreting historical data on past asset failures, service failures, and labor requirements, AI tools can create predictive models to warn you of potential breakdowns in advance. A comprehensive solution can also use this information to automatically create predictive maintenance work orders and direct them to the appropriate providers.

AI tech easily integrates with IoT networks that monitor device and appliance health and functionality. Upon recording an abnormal result, AI technology identifies the issue, projects the time and cost to fix it, and optimizes maintenance schedules accordingly.

One example of AI-enabled FM software that can assist in these and other tasks is ServiceChannel’s Decision Engine. It uses prescriptive analytics to help FMs make intelligent, data-driven decisions when selecting contractors, reviewing proposals, and scheduling maintenance.

With AI-enabled automated maintenance and breakdown detection, small facilities management teams can manage hundreds (even thousands) of buildings and assets with greatly reduced machine downtime. This, in turn, decreases spending and frees up time for FMs to focus on more important matters.

2.  Energy Optimization and Smart Building Control

Energy and utilities are likely one of the biggest lines on your annual budget, but how much of that spending is really necessary? With the average commercial building wasting 30% of all the energy it consumes, chances are that it’s less than you think.

While you can launch sustainability initiatives to try and reduce energy consumption, monitoring matters; after all, it’s too late to control spending once the utility bill arrives. Fortunately, AI-enabled tech can help you track energy usage in real time for overall tighter energy management.

You receive actionable insights into energy consumption patterns, enabling you to reduce waste. For example, AI tech used with IoT and remote management dashboards can catch energy leaks and operational strays such as poorly fitted HVAC ducts or a faulty electrical transformer.

AI can also give you more control over building systems that contribute most to your energy usage. Smart thermostats enhance temperature control by learning your usage patterns and automatically adjusting to maintain comfortable conditions without waste. These thermostats can reduce energy bills by an average of 8%. Similarly, AI-enabled lighting systems can switch fixtures on and off in response to space usage patterns and natural light conditions.

3. Enhanced Security and Access Control

AI has already greatly enhanced physical security at commercial facilities. Facilities managers often prioritize other concerns — such as addressing equipment downtime and improving operational efficiency — over security, despite its importance. That’s why many organizations now rely on artificial intelligence to fill in the gaps where manual security review and management fall short.

Traditional surveillance systems require a team of security personnel monitoring multiple screens simultaneously. The more extensive the surveillance, the more people are necessary to supervise it. With no risk of fatigue or distraction, AI can process large quantities of visual data around the clock to catch threats that humans might miss.

Access control, CCTV surveillance, intrusion detection, package screening, and weapon detection are just a few examples of commonplace data-driven security technology in FM. While useful on their own, these applications become even smarter when integrated with artificial intelligence and machine learning.

One influential startup, Aegis AI, has developed AI-powered software that can detect when a person in video footage is carrying a gun. This unique layer of situational awareness provides immense value to a facility security program, especially when combined with emergency alerts and first-responder notification.

Another young but rapidly growing company, IC Realtime, recently introduced an app and web platform named “Ella” that uses AI to analyze CCTV footage and make it instantly searchable under tags such as “red car,” “black hoodie,” and so on.

4. Advanced Analytics and Reporting

A comprehensive analytics program is critical to any FM team’s success. By analyzing facility data, managers can improve visibility, make data-driven decisions, and plan strategic initiatives — all while keeping an eye on the budget and long-term goals.

Today, AI is disrupting the traditional analytics model. In past decades, facilities data needed manual sorting, and facility managers and analysts often relied on gut feelings rather than data. AI can now automate these processes to generate faster, more reliable insights based on a comprehensive review of historical data.

By removing the potential for human biases and errors, AI-enabled FM software can more efficiently separate capital and operational spending, improve predictability, and enhance demand forecasting. Your organization is ready to make rapid, yet sound decisions to seize opportunities.

Another benefit of AI in FM analytics is its consistency. With AI-enabled software, even a new employee is capable of making smart choices in asset management. Prescriptive analytics backed by years, or even decades, of facility data can inform tough decisions and suggest the most logical, cost-effective course of action. And it all happens with little to no manual research.

Implementation Strategies for AI in FM

Successful implementation of AI tools in facility management systems and processes requires a strategic approach. Start by assessing how ready your existing systems are for new AI capabilities. Then carefully compare available solutions and follow key best practices to roll out those that align with your business goals.

Assessing Digital Readiness

To determine how ready your facilities management processes are for AI onboarding, consider:

• Existing Infrastructure: Does your hardware handle the massive data processing power of AI? Are you confident you have measures in place to protect sensitive data? Do you have adequate connectivity and cloud capability?
• Data Quality: Is all maintenance data digitized and accessible? Have you employed uniform data structures and labels across departments or locations? How confident are you in the accuracy of your data?
• Staff: Do facilities managers, maintenance and technicians, and other members of your team have adequate hard technical skills to learn new tools? Are you already taking steps to prepare your team for changes by explaining the key benefits of using AI?

If you’re uncertain of the answers to key infrastructure and data quality questions, consider conducting a technical audit. Employee surveys and performance reviews can help you assess the readiness of facility managers and the rest of your facilities management team.

Selecting AI-Powered FM Solutions

When comparing AI-powered FM solutions, keep the following in mind:

• Your Business Objectives: List your top operational challenges and goals.
• Existing Systems: Whenever possible, seek solutions that can seamlessly integrate with your existing platforms.
• Scalability: Keep your organization agile by choosing solutions that can grow with you, such as ServiceChannel’s AI-powered platform.
• Provider Expertise: Consider whether the provider has experience with your specific industry and conduct thorough due diligence.

Integration Best Practices

Once you’ve chosen the right AI tools for your business, follow these best practices to implement them:

• Use a phased strategy, implementing new tools in one department or location and then gradually expanding
• Maintain data quality over time to support accurate analytics
• Find ways to deploy service automation and other AI tools instead of existing workflows, rather than building new processes around tools
• Determine which key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to track success over time

ROI and Business Benefits

The right AI solutions can yield measurable financial and operational improvements for organizations. Your return on investment (ROI) comes from substantial cost savings, enhanced operational efficiency, improved asset management, and more informed decision-making.

Cost Savings and Efficiency Gains

A single-source-of-truth platform, such as ServiceChannel, ensures visibility into all tasks, communications, assets, and payment processes. It increases your level of control to support greater efficiency and revenue.

AI in facilities management amplifies the benefits of centralized building management systems. Its predictive capability reduces equipment downtime and emergency repair costs, enabling facilities managers and directors to better anticipate expenditures.

Optimizing energy consumption further slashes spending without compromising efficiency. You’ll free up room in the budget while making strides toward the goals of your sustainability initiatives. In addition, automating maintenance schedules minimizes labor waste and limits overtime for your organization.

Improved Asset Performance

With artificial intelligence supporting your facilities management program, you can strengthen asset management. Continuous monitoring enables facilities managers to more closely track asset lifecycles, while predictive analytics provide advanced warning of equipment failures.

Improved visibility opens the doors to earlier interventions before small problems become large liabilities. As a result, your assets can deliver peak performance to benefit your entire organization.

Enhanced Decision-Making

AI can analyze vast amounts of data and provide bold insights in seconds. With an AI-powered platform like ServiceChannel’s, you can elevate your data-driven decision-making for better outcomes. Plus, you can make key decisions faster, so you adapt more quickly to unexpected changes. You’ll be in a better position to shift priorities and resources at just the right time to maintain an exceptional customer experience.

Transform Your FM Operations with ServiceChannel AI

ServiceChannel can help you reinvent your facilities management operations. Our centralized platform provides the full data visibility that powers AI needs. Our Decision Engine empowers facility managers to make sound, data-driven decisions now — not later. Consequently, your organization enjoys increased agility and is better positioned for growth. With predictive maintenance and energy consumption tools, your assets can perform at peak efficiency with less downtime and waste.