On the surface, 2025 has not shaped up to be an easy year for facilities managers. Economic uncertainty continues, and skilled labor shortages and budgetary restrictions are making it difficult to improve building performance. These challenges are especially prominent in older buildings with outdated systems and aging infrastructure.
At the same time, external forces beyond the facilities manager’s desk are putting pressure on these teams. On a federal level, declining interest in clean technology combined with commercial leasing rates that have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels create additional challenges for facilities managers as they navigate investments and material improvements to their properties.
Meanwhile, climate change and extreme weather events continue to bear down on the United States, including flooding in the Midwest and South that killed more than 20 people earlier this month. These events have made clear the need for facilities managers to invest in emergency preparation planning.
While the facilities management space may outwardly seem unnavigable in the current political and economic environment, building performance standards and the push for resilient buildings are not losing momentum. The reason is simple: Resilient buildings are a good investment.
What Are Resilient Buildings?
According to the U.S. Green Building Council, resilient buildings are better prepared for adverse events and can more successfully recover from, and adapt to, these scenarios. Resilient buildings are planned with extreme weather events, climate change, and health threats in mind. They also prioritize operational and embodied carbon reduction, energy efficiency, and overall indoor environmental quality, which considers the interplay of light, sound, air quality, and thermal comfort in occupant experience.
Envision a resilient building that checks these boxes. For the sake of imagination, let’s say it’s a high-rise commercial building in New York City filled with “futuristic” workspaces oriented around occupant experience. The workspaces incorporate biophilic design, which is linked to improved well-being and productivity for office workers. Each workspace is welcoming and optimized for occupant health and performance, but it’s also more efficient in terms of building materials, performance, technology, and energy use.
Today’s Building Technologies, Tomorrow’s Resilient Buildings
Facilities managers reading this article could raise some arguments concerning resilient buildings. It’s not as simple as switching from reactive maintenance to a preventive, or even predictive, maintenance strategy. Additionally, older buildings face significant upfront costs for retrofitting and upgrades, and facilities managers contend with limited budgets, human resources, and competing priorities for capital improvements.
In our New York City high-rise example, the building would also be subject to the city’s Local Law 97 requirements for reducing—and eventually eliminating—carbon emissions. This is a great example of building performance standards set on a local level. Currently, there is no end in sight to these forms of regulatory action aimed at reducing climate impact and creating more resilient infrastructure.
So, where should facilities managers look to make incremental gains in building resilience?
Insulation
Balancing energy use with occupant comfort is a consistent challenge for facilities managers in cold and hot climates. The concerns around energy use encompass HVAC costs and sustainable energy requirements on the local, state, and federal levels. Fortunately, advancements in insulation solutions—including structurally insulated panels and phase-change material technology—are making this hot-and-cold balancing act slightly less daunting for facilities managers.
Even as the federal government pulls back on green energy initiatives, facilities managers will benefit from pursuing higher building performance standards, including the newly ratified LEED v5 from the USGBC. The occupants and owners of these buildings expect sustainability to be built in, and the insulation technologies on the market today quite literally create pathways to reducing operational carbon, lowering energy costs, and enhancing thermal comfort for occupants. From a financial perspective, buildings incorporating these attributes can also obtain higher rents and create more economic value for owners.
Pressurization
Containment is typically associated with healthcare and technological clean rooms, but pressurization technology has benefits beyond these sensitive spaces. In a broader application, pressurization technology connects with the resilience megatrend by sealing spaces and making buildings more adaptable, recoverable, and resistant to extreme weather events.
Additionally, as people spend more time indoors, indoor air quality grows in importance. As we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to improve and maintain indoor air quality to protect the health of occupants can become emergent, and fast. Sealing spaces and reducing air leakage can also improve energy efficiency and reduce the amount of power a building consumes.
Sensors and ‘Smart’ Building Technology
“Smart” buildings have already been covered at length in this publication, but it’s worth considering how every part of the building is used to achieve maximum performance results. At Armstrong, for example, we often ask ourselves what the ceiling plane can do and which attributes we can add to our solutions to get there.
Sensors are an excellent vehicle for optimizing a building’s “real estate”; in ceilings, they are intricately involved in improving overall efficiency and performance. First, facilities managers need the right control system. Then, in combination with advanced sensor technology, HVAC systems, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, buildings can be transformed into highly optimized spaces that regularly monitor and measure real-time performance.
In a 2024 survey, JLL Technologies found that 59% of facilities managers don’t have an AI strategy but are interested in learning more. This number is surprising because AI-powered automation has significant potential to improve building performance. As control systems with sensor technologies and HVAC capabilities produce building performance data, AI can act on that data to optimize performance in real-time. As AI becomes increasingly integrated into building control systems, this technology should only improve overall efficiency and indoor environmental quality.
Pre-Fab and Modular Construction
One of the most existential threats to buildings today is not technological or financial: It’s human. A widespread shortage of skilled workers is beginning to boil over in the construction industry, with the national trade organization Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) predicting that 439,000 additional workers will be needed for residential construction alone in 2025.
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this emerging crisis, pre-fabricated and modular solutions are emerging to ease some workforce woes facing facilities managers in 2025. For example, Armstrong has partnered with Seattle-based Overcast Innovations to create a pre-fabricated cloud system and modular grid that integrates mechanical, electric, and plumbing (MEP) requirements into a single ceiling system that can be installed quickly and improve indoor environmental quality.
Modular units can be installed in a fraction of the time it takes to complete typical construction, and those improvements can reduce some of the burden of labor shortages in the construction industry.
Getting Started in the Era of Building Resilience
Resilient buildings are a long-term business strategy, and the qualifiers of a resilient building depend on the building type, local climate, utility rates, regulatory requirements, and more. There is a technological solution for nearly every problem in a building, but understanding its current performance and operational goals is an essential first step. From there, facilities managers can determine how to bundle solutions to meet operational goals and work ahead in capital planning to ensure the best ROI for building performance improvements.
Additionally, facilities managers should explore available federal, state, and local tax incentives. The Qualifying Advanced Energy Project Credit (48C) program, established under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and expanded under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), is a great example. Despite ideological differences between the previous and current presidential administrations, investment in decarbonization is not declining.
We are entering a new era of resilient buildings that can stand up to climate change, extreme weather, and health threats through building technology. We are also equipped to create spaces that elevate indoor environmental quality and the well-being of occupants. While the first quarter of 2025 started on shaky ground, the future for facilities managers is rooted in resilience.
Mike Lorenz is the senior director of technology at Armstrong World Industries, where he has been a key player for over 20 years. With a robust product development and research background, Lorenz offers valuable operational experience both domestically and internationally. His early career at Armstrong focused on process manufacturing in the flooring sector, where he honed his skills in lean deployment and waste reduction. Since transitioning to the ceilings division in 2012, Lorenz has driven innovation and research.