Practical Facilities Tips, News & Advice.
As the U.S. faces a historic skilled trades labor shortage, the Lowe’s Foundation has announced the Building Futures Skilled Trades Coalition to help train and develop 1 million people for skilled trades careers by 2035. The national alliance is backed by over 75 American educators, businesses, workforce organizations, industry vendors, and stakeholders across the skilled […]
Facilities Management Advisor’s “Under Construction” series highlights some of the latest, most interesting facility project announcements every month. Astronomical SpaceX Investments Elon Musk, recently crowned the world’s first trillionaire, was busy highlighting two huge facility investments for his SpaceX company in August. (That’s in addition to crashing a SpaceX rocket into the moon.) In Louisiana, […]
In April, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) updated its National Emphasis Program on heat-related hazards. The revised program directs inspections and outreach for 55 high-risk industries in both indoor and outdoor work settings, including “warehousing and storage” under NAICS code 4931. Why does this matter for facilities managers? Because workers in warehouses, manufacturing […]
North America data center demand reached an all-time high in the first half of 2026 with 25 GW of absorption, double the level from a year ago and five times that of two years prior. JLL’s North America Data Center Report – Midyear 2026 reveals that while structural demand continues to accelerate, responsible growth now depends on […]
Facilities Management Advisor’s “Under Construction” series highlights some of the latest, most interesting facility project announcements every month. New Life for Vacant Office Return-to-work mandates and other factors have helped the office market rebound post-COVID, but there still remains a lot of unused or underutilized office space across the country. To revive vacant properties, many […]
Every construction project generates a large volume of critical information including drawings, O&M manuals, submittals, commissioning reports, warranties, and test records. Once the project is complete, that data often gets scattered or never fully makes its way to the facilities team. As Paul Petroski, a senior facilities leader with the Department of Defense, noted, “Drawings […]
The global data center market is expanding as demand from artificial intelligence (AI) uses outpaces available space capacity, pushing vacancy rates toward historic lows despite a wave of new supply, according to CBRE’s Global Data Center Trends report. Global supply reached 16 gigawatts (GW) in Q1 2026 across the 16 largest data center markets, up […]
In a city like Chicago, electrification rarely happens in isolation. Large retrofit projects are almost always delivered in occupied buildings, alongside active operations, and under pressure to modernize multiple systems at once. The projects that succeed understand this from the start. Electrification works best when treated as core infrastructure—the backbone that supports building automation, electric […]
Facilities Management Advisor’s “Under Construction” series highlights some of the latest, most interesting facility project announcements every month. Smart Factory for Futuristic Planes JetZero, an aerospace startup developing futuristic “all-wing” commercial and military aircraft, has broken ground on a massive smart factory on more than 600 acres in North Carolina. The 8 million square-foot facility represents […]
When a warehouse hits capacity or a maintenance shop can’t keep up with fleet growth, facilities managers face a decision that shapes the next decade of operations. The traditional path is a stick-built expansion, where general contractors frame and finish a structure on-site from raw materials. The alternative is a prefab metal building, where major […]