Your building is creating a huge amount of data, from work orders to utility bills. But are you using it correctly?
“If you don’t have the full story—the whole picture, including all of the information you need to use to make a decision—you could make the wrong decision,” explained Alisia Davis, director of client engagement, technology, for ESFM.
Davis was part of a panel at the 2024 IFMA World Workplace Conference & Expo that also included:
- Danielle Lanciano, panel moderator and director of proposal development for ESFM
- Melissa Grimes, regional vice president for ESFM
- John Remsden, vice president of technical services and energy solutions for ESFM
The panel discussion covered all aspects of using data to manage both hard and soft services in facilities. Data can help facility professionals manage buildings more easily and efficiently—but only if they’re using the right data that’s collected consistently and interpreted in a way that empowers better business decisions. Consider these tips for collecting and using your building’s data streams.
1. Garbage in, garbage out.
Everyone is familiar with this saying, and it applies to your data as much as it applies to anything else, Davis said. “If you’re making decisions based on data that isn’t validated and true, you could make the wrong decision,” Davis explained. “You want data you can tell a story with. Just because you know how many gigabytes you’ve used this month [on your phone plan] doesn’t mean anything to you if you don’t know how many you have left. There’s missing information if you can’t tell the whole story.”
2. Watch out for new problems created by FM tools.
Proptech can solve many problems, but a standalone tool can create new problems by siloing your data. If different data is trapped in different places and systems aren’t speaking to each other, you won’t be able to make good business decisions. Operators will be hamstrung by the need to consult multiple systems to accomplish one task.
“When you have data on inspections in a portal over here, and you have to go to a different portal to get information on how often that sensor’s going off to replace the toilet paper, and then your CMMS over here is telling us how often we have corrective work orders coming in because the toilet paper’s out, none of that data is existing together,” Davis explained. “Our operators need that efficiency. We can’t expect our operators to be data analysts.”
3. Make sure your building automation system is calibrated.
“What are we doing with BAS and BMS information?” Remsden asked. “A lot of times, we go into buildings and find it’s stagnant. It’s not calibrated. You’ve got heat chasing cold.”
Your building automation system should be calibrated regularly. If it isn’t, call the vendor and ask them to do it. Don’t try to calibrate the BAS in-house. “A lot of owners say, ‘I have a BAS, but we’ll calibrate it ourselves’ and then it doesn’t get calibrated,” Remsden said. “That’s like not changing your oil and thinking you’re going to make it 100,000 miles.”
4. Inspect what you expect.
Data can help you hone scheduling and better organize how people do work, but there’s still a human element—and that human element generates its own data as well.
“If someone says they did it and they signed off on the checklist, did they actually do it and do it well?” Davis asked. “Did they get the fingerprints off the mirror? We know it was done as scheduled and we know how much traffic has been through that restroom. If we don’t look at what we’re inspecting, how do we know if we need to adjust that schedule?”
5. Maximize the way you use your existing technologies.
You don’t necessarily need to invest in exciting new tech—at least, not right away. There may be more things you can do with the technology solutions you already have. “How can you further leverage what you already have before introducing something new?” Davis asked.
