Practical Facilities Tips, News & Advice.
The International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), the Brown University Pandemic Center, and the Air Club have jointly released a new report highlighting a rapidly expanding wave of indoor air quality (IAQ) policy innovation across the globe. Drawing lessons from nearly 160 policies spanning 40 countries, the report identifies five leading policy models that governments are […]
Some building owners and tenants view facilities managers as people who handle unexpected problems. But in many cases, the problems FMs face are predictable. The evidence: an analysis of 9 million service requests from 2024 and 2025, which revealed common patterns across geographies, building classes, and building types—patterns that may remove the element of surprise and […]
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 […]
Walk through almost any facility and you’ll see hard hats, safety glasses, first aid kits, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) in use every day. The gear is there, employees are trained, and everything appears to comply. But here’s the question many employers never ask: Is compliance enough? What some facilities managers don’t realize is […]
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 […]
Editor’s note: In this interview with FMA sister publication EHSLeaders, Cooper Briscoe, VP of marketing at Brivo, discusses how AI-powered video intelligence helps organizations get increased value out of existing camera systems. (Edited for clarity) Q: Why hasn’t the prevalence of cameras resulted in improved safety? Briscoe: I think you have to look back at what cameras […]
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 […]
Ask a facilities manager what they do, and the honest answer in 2026 sounds less like building operations and more like air traffic control. A typical morning means lining up an HVAC contractor, chasing a quote that was promised last week, approving an invoice, fielding a tenant complaint about a meeting room, confirming a fire […]
A facilities manager’s day is full of urgent tasks. Managing the visitor log rarely feels urgent. But paper sign-in sheets create small costs that add up over time. First, lost records. Paper gets thrown away, coffee-stained, or torn. If an insurance adjuster asks for a thirty-day visitor history after an incident, a missing page becomes […]
Back to Basics is an article series that highlights important, but possibly overlooked, information facilities management professionals should know. In facilities management, edge artificial intelligence (AI) can be transformative. Automating routine tasks and improving the accuracy of building data could streamline workflows and lower operational expenses. However, successful deployment requires management to understand what edge AI […]