How technological advances affect the facilities management professional

1. Technological innovations: implications for
the facilities management professional
U.J. Adama
UCT-Nedbank Urban Real Estate Research Unit
Department of Construction Economics and Management
University of Cape Town

2. Introduction
Outline of presentation
• Introduction
• Some technological innovations
• Four general effects of technological innovations
• Case study- Artificial intelligence
• Implication for the facilities management professional

3. Introduction
• Technological innovation (TI) was one of the factors that led to
the evolution of the profession of facilities management.
• TI have become part of the everyday life of the facilities
manager presenting lot of opportunities and threats.
• TI affects:
• FM profession
• FM managerial structures within organisations
• Professionals.

4. Some technological innovations

5. 4 general effects of T.I
• Technological advancement in medical sciences will
increase life expectancy.
• Advancement in T.I will stimulate migration of more people
into the cities.
• Growth of the internet connectivity will change business
models substantially.
• On-line connectivity is exposed to enormous security threats

6. • United Nations reported in 2012 that an estimated 316,600
people in the world were over 100 years old.
• Advancement in medical technologies will raise that number
to over three million by 2050.
• A lot more aged people will be living and working in their
homes.
• Building facilities will need to be fitted with more services
that support the aged.
1. Life expectancy

7. • Residential homes designs will incorporate amenities that are
akin to the office, like:
• Internet facilities and other network enabling cables, sensors
and access points will become part of the residential building
architecture
• More data about people’s behaviour will be mined from the
various surveillance sensors that are fixed in residential
houses.
• This will open a new business opportunity (data sales) for
facilities management.
• Property value will be influenced by the volume of data that can
be obtained from the property.

8. Rank Country Years
1 Monaco 89.42
2 Japan 85.26
3 Singapore 85.21
4 Macau 84.55
5 San Marino 83.34
6 Andorra 82.85
7 Guernsey 82.61
8 Hong Kong 82.52
9 Australia 82.31
10 Italy 82.28
216 Nigeria 54.07
228 South Africa 50.30
Source: Canty Media 2017

9. 2. Increased migration
• An estimated 70% of the world’s population will be living in
cities.
• This will lead to the emergence of mega cities, mega
regions and mega corridors such as the Boston to
Washington, DC (BosWash) corridor.
• This corridor is estimated to reach a population of 58.2
million inhabitants and will account for about 20 percent of
United States GDP in 2025.

10. • The increased city population will put enormous pressure
on the urban infrastructure like water, energy, road and
transportation.
• The “smart city” concept - integrated management of
urban infrastructure in ways that makes them more
efficient.
• These cities will be Techno-centric, People-centric and
Eco-centric
• The FM professional must brace up for the management
of the mega cities

11. 3. Emergence of new business models
• Increased online business will be witnessed, physical
shopping malls will have to find alternative uses.
• Online retail sales is projected to reach $4.3 trillion by
2025.
• Virtual stores, virtual hypermarkets, interactive stores, and
“Click and Collect” retailing models will emerge.
• The new business models will lead to more asset
rental/usage than ownership.

12. 4. Connectivity and security threats
• More than 50billion devices will be connected to the internet
by 2020.
• An estimated one trillion sensors will be connected to the
internet by 2022.
• Incidences of security attack on networks by hackers and
terrorist is almost a weekly occurrence.
• The remodelling of the security architecture is a matter of
priority.

13. • The more the automation of systems, the more the
vulnerability of the automated systems to attacks.
• In the past, security is perceived as an expenditure
incurred to protect the business, but in an economy driven
by software, security must protect, inspire the confidence
of clients and enable the business.

14. Artificial intelligence - A case study
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is an advancement in computer
science that aims to create intelligent machines that work
and react like human beings.
Computers are programmed with artificial intelligence for
certain traits like:
• Knowledge
• Reasoning
• Speech recognition

15. • Problem solving
• Perception
• Learning
• Planning
• Manipulate and move objects
• The capability of the AI indicates a radical transformation
in many sectors, FM inclusive.
• The AI enabled technological innovations can
conveniently eradicate many routinely performed activities
in the FM sector.

16. Security robot on patrol
Knightscope Security Robots patrolling Microsoft Campus
A fully autonomous robots with an array of
on-board sensors used to monitor the
surrounding environment. It communicates
to provide real-time alerts of unusual or
suspicious activities to a control centre.

17. Security robots

18. Cleaning robots

19. Garbage truck attached with robot

20. Waste sorting by artificially intelligent
robots

21. Automatic façade cleaning

22. • The greatest advantage of the artificial intelligence
machines is that they are able to perform without stopping.
• They do not need to receive pay check every month and
have minimal maintenance cost.
• AI carry out task with greater precision and accuracy.
• The AI can process and present a logical data that is
supported with recommendation in a fraction of seconds,
upon which decisions can be made to top management.

23. • AI is being developed for predictive maintenance. The
machine will collect data from multiple sources, analyse
them to predict equipment failure before it happens.
• It means that middle-level managers could be bypassed
because decisions can be reached in fraction of time that
it normally takes (Atkin and Bildsten, 2017).
• The implication of the wide use of AI is that many soft jobs
will disappear because many organisations have sensor
controlled equipment that can out perform human beings.

24. • Many investors will adopt equipment that can be more
efficient and lower their operation expenditure in the long
run.
• The more the sensor, the more the routine jobs and soft
service are taken away.
• The facilities management professional need to innovate
new strategy of survival in the technology driven world.

25. • The FM professional must move from a consumer of the
technologies to defining the technologies that should be
built.
• With the increased security threat, the FM professional will
need to showcase a robust security architecture as a
differentiating factor of competition in the emerging
business world.
• The risks of poorly secured network will expose corporate
secrets and diminish the reputation of the FM
organisation.
Potential Implications for FM professional

26. • Artificial intelligence enabled machines will be adopted to
handle the big data for better analysis, interpretation and
possible predictive services in FM.
• The combination of Artificial Intelligence, Sensors and
Robots forecloses the relevance of the tactical level of FM.
• T.I will do some destruction to the profession of FM with
respect to the loss of routine and soft jobs and also
challenge the relevance of the FM in some cases.

27. Way forward
• Collaboration/innovation
Amongst firms, individual practitioner and producers of FM
consumables based on the historical knowledge of the
facilities.
• Diversification
With the knowledge of facilities lifecycle, the facilities
management is better positioned to pioneer the predictive
maintenance.
Backward integration, whereby the company buys or internally
produce parts of its supply chain.

28. • FM professional can also pioneer the development of
security architecture based on their facilities management
experience.
Development of the macro level services
• There is need to begin to look beyond the micro level of
the building facility towards the macro level of the society
especially the social impact.
• Now that the next level is smart cities, smart buildings, etc,
with people-centric, eco-centric and techno-centric
attributes, FM practitioners can leverage on the people-
centric factor to solve some of the social problems in the
society.

29. Reference
• Brian Atkin, Louise Bildsten, (2017) "A future for facility management", Construction
Innovation, Vol. 17 Issue: 2, pp.116-124, https://doi.org/10.1108/CI-11-2016-0059

30. Thank you
www.ureru.uct.ac.za