Automated & Elevated

They also probably did not realize they were signing up to spend most of their time moving information between the people who need it — store managers, technicians, vendors, finance, operations, executives and so on. Yes, all those activities are necessary, but they have never been the FM leader’s greatest strength or where their true value lives.

AI has the potential to change that.

In this AI-powered reality, FMs move from being coordinators to being strategists. From keeping the machine running to deciding how the machine should run.

But what does that really look like? In the AI-powered FM world, what work gets automated, and what work gets elevated?

Better communication

Relationships become stronger in the conversations that happen between the work — reviewing, evaluating performance, solving recurring problems and planning. But only when the conversations are meaningful.

Imagine a location that experiences the same equipment failure three times in six months. The work orders get closed, the invoices get paid. On paper, everything looks great. But the real question is not whether the work order is complete — it is why the problem keeps happening. Historically, answering that question required sorting through service history and piecing together what happened across multiple visits.

According to a 2023 Autodesk and IFMA report, more than 60 percent of respondents estimated that poor-quality data and systems integration accounted for 10 to 20 percent of wasted resource time.

AI changes the conversation. Instead of having to spend hours reconstructing the past, facilities leaders and providers have time and energy to focus on the future — reviewing performance, identifying root causes and deciding what changes need to be made.

Start evolving. Not when another work order closes successfully, but when both sides are communicating and solving the next problem before it happens.

Strategic capital decisions

Most organizations have plenty of data at their fingertips. But they are short on time required to make sense of it. When leaders can turn their focus from putting together history and chasing updates to making decisions that will shape the next five years, instead of just the next five days, they are being strategic.

Case in point: One of the most expensive mistakes organizations make is treating every asset decision like an isolated event. A chiller fails. A roof leaks. An HVAC unit needs another repair. The immediate question is usually, "How is this fixed?" When it should be: "Should this still be getting fixed?"

AI does not make the capital decision — nor should it. But it can help leaders arrive at a decision with a clearer understanding of the tradeoffs, the patterns and the long-term implications.

Thinking beyond the backlog

The backlog is where good intentions go to collect dust.

FM leaders know the pattern. A work order comes in. Then there is an escalation. Then a status request about the escalation. Then, a finance question about the invoice attached to the work order that started everything. Most of the work is necessary. But taken together it creates a system in which the newest problem gets the attention because it is the newest problem.

This is the trap. A backlog that looks like a list of tasks when it is really a competition for prioritization. Which one is a symptom of a bigger problem? Which ones keep reappearing and repeating because the business is solving the same issue repeatedly at the work order level instead of addressing the underlying issue?

AI will not make the backlog disappear, but it will make it more digestible. It can uncover patterns across different locations, flag repeat failures, summarize service history and help FM leaders identify the difference between isolated incidents and operational drift.

That is valuable because strategic work typically does not start as strategy. It usually starts with a small pattern that gets ignored long enough to become a large problem.

Growth planning looks optional until a new location opens. Resilience planning looks theoretical until a major failure occurs. Asset strategy looks deferrable until the budget is already committed somewhere else.

The FM leader's job, then, is to recognize those problems while they are still small enough to do something about them.

More empowered teams

Strong teams do not come together because someone finally found extra time on a Friday afternoon. They grow through coaching, process improvements and ongoing investment. These are all the things that tend to disappear when administrative work takes over the day.

When FMs can lean on AI, time once dedicated to administrative coordination is reallocated to investing in people: developing managers, helping new team members become productive faster, and identifying the processes everyone complains about, but nobody has any time to fix.

Stronger cross-functional partnerships

FMs have always influenced the business, even if they did not always have a seat at the table. But more time to work strategically means more opportunity to partner with finance, operations and HR to solve broader business challenges and align facility decisions with organizational goals.

When FM leaders spend less of their day coordinating activity, they have more time to participate in conversations where their knowledge and points of view help improve the business. Finance teams gain better visibility into operational risk. Operations teams gain a clearer understanding of how facility performance impacts the business. FMs become active contributors to broader business decisions rather than passive participants in isolated operational discussions.

For all the discussion about how AI will change FM, it is worth remembering that the profession's highest-value work really never changed.

Buildings still need strategies, not just repairs. Providers still need accountability, not just work orders. Teams still need leadership, not just direction.

The tools may change. The role's core purpose does not. If AI succeeds in anything, it may be helping FMs spend more of their time on the work they were always meant to do.