Generative artificial intelligence (AI), a type of deep-learning model that creates content using the data it’s trained on, is transforming the future of facilities and how they are designed, operated and maintained. How can AI help your facilities management work? MCS’s Chief Information Officer, Marin Ursu, shares his thoughts on the areas where AI can evolve to better aid facilities management.
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Pre-contract measurements
Before entering into a contract with a service provider, generative AI may be able to assist with taking over tasks like commercial property measurements that help your potential facilities maintenance partners create pricing models. Where individuals are currently paid to manually visit a property and take measurements, AI will be able to use satellite-map views in combination with property listings to generate these details. Over time, this will allow you to build a repository of historical measurements for the property and be able to more effectively price projects.
Translating contracts into schedules
AI can also be used to read a new contract, translating it into schedules for when work will be performed and enforcing SLA times in a work order management system. This could involve establishing a schedule for grass cuts or lawn care, for example.
“Currently, contracts are typically read manually with an individual adding the various components to the workflow, so it’s a process ripe for automation,” Marin says. “For facilities managers, this AI-driven automation can help ensure accuracy and provide peace of mind.”
Expediting regular and preventive maintenance
Conducting preventive maintenance today requires an individual to manually create a service agreement or work order for pre-scheduled work. Once the property has been measured and the contract terms are understood for regularly scheduled maintenance, AI can be used to schedule it automatically. It can also perform follow-up communication with vendors and perform tracking as needed.
In the future, Marin sees where AI in facilities management will be used to catalog fixed assets to inform a preventive maintenance/replacement plan, predicting the likelihood of repair or replacement needs and alerting you to streamline the process.
Handling reactive service callsIn addition to preventive maintenance, AI in facilities management will be applied to reactive maintenance requests as well, helping clients diagnose issues before sending a tech to the site via an open maintenance ticket with a description of the issue and shared photos or video that can be analyzed by AI. “By training AI for these scenarios, over time it will become even more effective at handling them—and more beneficial in facilities maintenance,” Marin predicts. “For facilities managers, this means shorter down times and partners who show up prepared to solve the problem at hand. Being able to deliver ‘first call resolution’ (FCR) can improve customer and tenant satisfaction, reduce costs and create efficiencies while being able to better track service technician field performance.” Managing weather-related communicationAI is currently involved in a lot of pre-storm communications, but there are certainly opportunities to increase its involvement, such as automatically creating work orders to ensure vendors are ready. And if the storm passes without incident, the orders can be easily be canceled (also by AI). MCS is already employing this for major weather events like hurricanes and blizzards. “In these path of storm scenarios, we create work orders for vendors that get executed if a pre-defined threshold is reached,” Marin explained. “This pre-planning allows us and our service partners to be ready so that our clients can receive quick responses if and when a storm strikes.” Enhancing reporting and analyticsFacilities maintenance thrives on precise and effective reporting and analytics, using it to improve decision-making, plan future work, improve efficiency, hit budget targets and more. AI is already streamlining traditional analytics and reporting processes via automation for rapid, data-based insights. “AI in facilities management can also standardize analytics across the board, ensuring that decision-making isn’t determined by the expertise level of the individual running the software but driven by hard data. Over time the data captured on the property and the appliances within can be analyzed to identify potential issues before they become a problem,” Marin says. “The insights it can provide can offer a host of benefits, from cost savings and customer satisfaction to preventing maintenance issues before they arise.” Promoting energy efficiencyOptimizing energy consumption is critical for facilities management. Beyond lessening an organization’s environmental impact, it can also deliver tremendous cost savings, and AI can be a valuable tool in this effort. For example, AI can be employed to analyze energy-use patterns to identify waste and make recommendations to enhance efficiency and, in turn, sustainability. |
As AI continues to progress and evolve, facilities managers will need to keep pace. Here are a few potential critical areas of focus to consider.
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There are already endless ways to employ AI in facilities management, and we’re only just beginning to unlock its potential. Learn more about how Chain Store Maintenance - an MCS Company is already putting AI to work to improve our facilities maintenance services for your commercial business.
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