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Facility Fusion 2025: Building Lifecycle Management Insights
Susan Clarke, Building Operations Strategy, Autodesk
Earlier this year, Austin played host to IFMA Facility Fusion, bringing together facility management professionals from a wide array of industries. Discussions through the event highlighted the importance of building lifecycle collaboration, with a growing interest among facility managers to exert more influence.
At Facility Fusion I chaired a panel "Optimizing Facilities Management Through the Lens of Lifecycle Management." This panel included industry experts who have worn many hats across design, construction, and operations: Ed Buckley, Meg Swanson and Ted Ritter! Read on to learn the three key takeaways.
Takeaway 1: A Highly Fragmented AECO Industry Is Ready for Teamwork
- The architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) industries are notoriously fragmented and suffer from broken data flows.
- When new projects commence, facilities management teams are frequently consulted too late, leading to missed opportunities to use their valuable insights and early direction. Data shows that 80% of firms do not consistently involve operational teams in new design and construction work.
- Facility managers would like to collaborate and be consulted in earlier stages of projects. After all, great-quality facilities are the result of design, construction, and operations teamwork.
- The panel cautioned that we should not rush to add facilities teams to new project meetings! The first step is for facility managers to have a clear view of their purpose and value-add within project meetings. They must plan to remain actively involved and not lose interest.
- Throughout the conference, it was clear that the industry is immensely excited about AI's potential to uplevel productivity.
- But as AI depends on quality and accessible data, problems are on the horizon for facilities teams with data scattered across spreadsheets, emails, point solutions and local drives.
- As operational teams are often the “receivers” of data from different AEC stakeholders, including GCs, they must proactively assert their data expectations as soon as they get sight of projects.
- The panel felt that data standards like COBIE and OSCRE are emerging as common industry standards and offer a good framework to enhance data governance and support a digital thread.
Takeaway 3: Action Can Start Today
- Connecting teams and data across the AECO industry is difficult but not insurmountable. The panel shared real-life successes witnessed firsthand, from US airports to UK Public-Private Partnerships.
- Often, these projects had “Lifecycle Champions” at their core. These are determined individuals who understand the bigger picture and can convince their peers of the benefit of thinking across the lifecycle.
- The panel proposed actionable ideas for the FM industry, emphasising the importance of being proactive and taking small, incremental steps to build momentum.
- A good starting point for FM is to learn AEC project terminology. This can help them to speak the same language as the project team, such as understanding project milestones (e.g. 30% design) and that the review/approval mechanisms are through “Submittals.”
Next year, Facility Fusion heads to The Golden City - San Francisco! Mark your calendars for April 7–9, 2026, and prepare for another Facility Fusion experience.
Low-Bid Acquisition: A Broken System for Building Owners?
What is it: The Simplar Foundation critically examines the widespread use of low-bid acquisition methods in the construction industry, arguing that these practices prioritize cost over value, resulting in delayed schedules, higher long-term expenses, and adversarial project environments. Drawing on research and performance data, Simplar outlines the systemic inefficiencies of low-bid procurement and makes a compelling case for performance-based strategies that better align with long-term asset management goals.
Stakeholder Audience: Corporate-Institutional Owners, Real Estate Investors-Developers, Architecture-Engineering-Construction (AEC), Building Owners, Organizational Leadership, Facility Operations, Service Providers-Consultants, Legal-Risk Management, Regulatory Bodies, Trade-Professional-Standards Bodies
Inform or Action: Informational – encourages stakeholders to reassess procurement practices and consider adopting performance-based models.
#BLMI #IFMA #Autodesk #Simplar #ConstructionProcurement #FacilitiesManagement #LifecycleThinking #ValueOverCost #SmartContracts
