Subsequent yr, facility administration success will depend upon figuring out the right way to leverage the developments at present shaping the business, together with the rise of AI and automation, closing the talents hole, constructing resiliency into operations, optimizing hybrid work fashions, navigating advanced compliance necessities, and constructing partnerships throughout the enterprise.
Key takeaways
- Transfer past primary automation to leverage AI for predictive intelligence. Built-in platforms are essential for connecting information, enabling proactive decision-making, and considerably lowering operational prices by anticipating points earlier than they come up
- The way forward for FM depends on empowering groups with information interpretation abilities and user-friendly expertise. Prioritize complete coaching and intuitive AI-enabled instruments to rework facility managers into strategic, data-driven leaders able to constructing resilient and adaptive environments
- Fragmented techniques hinder progress. Implementing unified, AI-enabled platforms helps simplify advanced challenges like hybrid work optimization and evolving compliance necessities. This strategy supplies centralized visibility, automated workflows, and measurable advantages, turning operational burdens into strategic property
Every pattern brings challenges, but additionally alternatives for facility administration groups that act early and strategically.
AI and automation: Shifting from effectivity to predictive intelligence
AI is quickly evolving past effectivity positive factors, changing into the foundational spine of predictive methods which might be reworking how facility managers plan, keep, and optimize operations.
It’s a crucial change, particularly as getting older infrastructure and rising operational prices more and more demand smarter, quicker decision-making.
For instance, strategically integrating IoT sensors into crucial gear like HVAC techniques, groups can proactively flag anomalies and schedule interventions earlier than failures happen, chopping downtime, and increasing the helpful lifetime of property.
One other instance: AI-powered dashboards assist facility managers consolidate and analyze information from disparate techniques, together with upkeep, area, and vitality administration, simplifying advanced duties equivalent to capital planning, guaranteeing compliance, and conducting thorough operational opinions.
The advantages of a predictive strategy are clear. In actual fact, the Eptura Office Index, reveals reactive work orders take twice as lengthy preventive duties.
Join your information to make AI be just right for you in 2026
The important thing to unlocking AI’s full potential lies in built-in platforms. Whereas siloed instruments inevitably decelerate decision-making, a unified information atmosphere permits the type of predictive insights that not solely enhance effectivity but additionally considerably cut back operational prices.
Closing the talents hole: Empowering the workforce for digital facility administration
Facility managers are more and more recognizing the potential for AI to rework their operations, shifting past primary automation to extra strategic functions. Its potential to course of huge quantities of knowledge shortly permits for extra knowledgeable decision-making, which is essential for optimizing advanced constructing techniques and occupant experiences.
The sensible utility of AI is already evident in lots of areas of amenities administration. It empowers groups to dedicate their experience to higher-value actions, equivalent to strategic life cycle planning, optimizing budgets, and enhancing general service high quality.
Nevertheless, in keeping with the 2025 Office Index report, 50% of organizations report that inadequate worker AI talent units and a scarcity of cross-platform integration are vital boundaries to efficiently deploying AI.
Addressing these challenges by intuitive instruments and complete coaching is vital to unlocking AI’s full potential and enabling amenities managers to grow to be extra proactive and data-driven strategists.
Put money into upskilling and intuitive designs to show automation into benefit
By prioritizing complete coaching alongside the deployment of intuitive, user-friendly instruments. Organizations that embrace this twin technique will empower their amenities managers to evolve from reactive problem-solvers into proactive, data-driven strategists, able to navigate the way forward for facility administration.
Resiliency as the brand new benchmark: Constructing adaptive environments
Resiliency in asset and facility administration means creating areas and techniques that may adapt seamlessly to disruptions, whether or not these are gear failures, shifts in occupancy, or excessive climate occasions. Crucially, this adaptation occurs with out compromising security or effectivity.
By 2026, resiliency will stand as a core efficiency metric for all trendy amenities.
Clever buildings are on the coronary heart of this adaptive functionality. IoT sensors and AI-driven controls permit techniques like HVAC, lighting, and cleansing schedules to regulate to real-time situations. When information from all constructing techniques, sensors, and upkeep flows right into a single platform, amenities managers acquire full visibility, enabling them to behave shortly, lowering waste and considerably enhancing occupant consolation.
Adaptive areas, the place environmental settings and repair ranges match utilization, create an expertise that feels each seamless and protected for occupants. Prioritizing this expertise affords sensible advantages for operations. It reduces avoidable service calls, retains property inside optimum working ranges, and helps groups plan staffing ranges successfully to fulfill demand.
Design for adaptability to remain forward of disruption
Built-in platforms, mixed with intuitive AI, are important for creating buildings that reply mechanically to altering situations. These developments defend uptime, reduce prices, and elevate confidence in facility operations.
Hybrid work: From uncertainty to optimization
With hybrid now a settled query for a lot of, the main focus now shifts to optimization: fostering connection and productiveness, controlling operational and actual property prices, and delivering constant experiences throughout all websites.
Eptura’s information over the previous few years clearly reveals the need of optimizing hybrid fashions. Desk bookings per constructing rose by 33% globally from Q1 2023 to Q1 2024. Additionally, guests per location almost doubled throughout all areas in three years. Leaders additionally challenge a mean 3–8% incremental income from efficient in-office use, signaling that well-designed hybrid fashions contribute to measurable enterprise worth.
To ship operational effectivity, firms must concentrate on translating occupancy and reserving patterns into actionable methods. It helps distribute demand throughout the week, cluster groups on collaboration days, and fine-tune constructing companies to precise wants, together with:
- Stability demand throughout the week. Use staff neighborhoods and reserving home windows to distribute occupancy and cut back peak congestion
- Align vitality to presence. Cross-analyzing vitality versus occupancy reveals waste. Aligning HVAC and lighting to precise presence lowers prices
- Proper-size layouts. Desk sharing can cut back workplace footprint by as much as 30% by matching provide to precise demand
Sensible functions of data-drive decision-making guarantee organizations can use sources successfully whereas additionally optimizing the worker and office expertise.
Optimize hybrid now to seize flexibility positive factors
Corporations that implement unified, AI-enabled platforms will simplify hybrid work. Visible occupancy, automated workflows, and cell journeys in a single expertise will rework hybrid from a logistical necessity right into a measurable benefit.
Compliance: Managing complexity in a digital world
Regulatory change is accelerating throughout information privateness, constructing operations, and digital reporting, significantly within the European Union. Facility groups should handle compliance for each private and device-generated information as constructing techniques grow to be smarter and extra interconnected.
For instance, The EU Knowledge Act requires entry and portability for information generated by related merchandise and associated companies, units guidelines for honest information sharing, and introduces cloud switching necessities to keep away from lock-in.
Proposed GDPR modifications would ease cookie consent and permit sure AI coaching beneath “professional curiosity,” narrowing definitions and lowering pop-up burdens, elevating the bar on transparency and choice monitoring.
Corporations will want cautious classification and contractual safeguards.
Amenities accumulate huge quantities of knowledge, from vitality consumption and gear efficiency to area utilization and safety entry logs. A lot of this information, particularly occupancy patterns or entry information, can include private components, creating a fancy set of obligations.
Managing consent, information rights, and entry for each device-generated and private information inside a single operational framework presents a major problem, which suggests proactive information administration and a unified strategy are not non-compulsory. They’re important for mitigating threat and guaranteeing operational continuity in a quickly evolving regulatory panorama.
Embed compliance to scale back threat and value in 2026
Compliance turns into strategic when platforms make governance usable. Centralized visibility, automated workflows, and shareable logs cut back threat and reporting burden, releasing time for operations.
Getting ready for 2026, the yr of related intelligence
2026 is the yr facility administration strikes from reactive operations to proactive, information‑pushed technique. The developments shaping the business, together with AI adoption, abilities growth, resiliency, hybrid optimization, and compliance, are interconnected. Success depends upon constructing a robust information tradition and investing in unified platforms that make AI intuitive and actionable.
Facility managers who embrace these modifications will handle extra than simply holding tempo. They’ll lead. By combining expertise with strategic perception, you’ll be able to create workplaces which might be environment friendly, resilient, and prepared for the long run.
Continuously requested questions
By Erin Sevitz
As Vice President of Content material and Buyer Advertising at Eptura, Erin Sevitz oversees groups answerable for offering worktech insights and fascinating 25 million Eptura customers worldwide. With over 10 years in thought management on office administration and the constructed atmosphere, Erin brings deep business data to her position. Beforehand, she led communications for the Worldwide Facility Administration Affiliation, a worldwide nonprofit devoted to skilled growth for office strategists and constructing managers, and served as editor in chief for IFMA’s FMJ journal.
