.svg)
Key Takeaways
- Vendor fragmentation creates hidden costs through coordination burden, siloed data, and unclear ownership, limiting efficiency and outcomes.
- Labor shortages make traditional staffing models unsustainable, while integrated facilities services enables flexible talent deployment and more resilient operations.
- Integrated facilities services (IFS) replace fragmented vendor models with unified accountability, improving visibility,performance, and operational control.
Transcript
The operating model in place at most facilities hasn’t kept pace with the reality of work. For facilities leaders, it’s no longer sustainable (or even possible) to oversee the complex web of vendors,services, and sites. Site managers are keeping track of more locations, more specialized systems and more vendors. The result is too many balls in in the air, and not enough control.
The hidden cost of fragmentation
On paper, a multi-vendor model can look manageable. Each provider owns a defined scope: cleaning, engineering, maintenance, landscaping, security. In practice,however, the burden shifts upstream to the facilities leader responsible for orchestrating it all.
Each vendor has its own reporting structure, its own response timeline, its own definition of done. The result is a coordination burden that falls squarely on the facilities team and keeps them perpetually reactive.
Multiply that across regions or sites, and what emerges is not flexibility, but fragmentation. As Ashley Bradarich, ABM Director of Business Development, puts it, “They’re used to calling their different vendors for different things.Things have been traditionally separated.” That separation is exactly where complexity, and inefficiency, creeps in.
This fragmentation creates three compounding issues:
- Operational drag: Time is spent coordinating vendors rather than improving performance.
- Limited visibility: Data is inconsistent, siloed, and often backward-looking.
- Diffused accountability: When performance drops, ownership becomes unclear.
Leaders end up managing activity, not outcomes.In an environment where cost, efficiency, and experience are under scrutiny,that’s no longer sustainable.
Complexity is raising the bar
“Facilities” is a broad category that encompasses many different operational environments: 24/7 manufacturing plants, high-throughput distribution centers, regulated life sciences labs, large-scale campuses, and passenger-heavy airports.
These are not static environments. They are dynamic, interdependent systems where a failure in one area—HVAC, cleaning, energy management—can cascade into operational or financial disruption.
And, across every type of facility, external pressures are intensifying.
- Labor constraints are limiting access to skilled technical talent
- Inflation and wage pressure are compressing already tight budgets
- Sustainability targets are adding new layers of responsibility
- Workplace expectations are shifting toward better experience and reliability
Against this backdrop, the traditional vendor model shows its limits. It was not designed for real-time decision-making, predictive operations, or integrated performance management.
Skilled labor shortages compound the problem
Facilities leaders are no longer just managing budgets—they’re managing scarcity. Eugenio Burnier, SVP of ABM Performance Solutions, says skilled technical talent is increasingly difficult to find and even harder to scale across sites.
But the issue goes beyond hiring. Traditional models lock labor into silos: separate vendors, separate teams, limited flexibility. Integrated approaches fundamentally change that equation, allowing organizations to redeploy talent dynamically, scale resources across geographies, and use technology to reduce dependence on hard-to-find skills.
The result is not just better staffing. It’s a more resilient operating model.
Shifting from vendor management to outcome ownership
Fortunately,there’s an alternative: integrated facilities services (IFS). Under this model,a single provider covers all services, from janitorial and landscaping to HVAC,electrical, engineering, and EV infrastructure. In specialized environments,that extends further: glass cleaning in life sciences facilities, mission critical systems monitoring, and even managing a client's training facility or construction cleaning when a new site comes online. Data and technology are layered on top, connecting it all through a single reporting platform.
Perhaps most importantly, IFS is flexible. As Burnier put it: "There's no one-size-fits-all. It's not like you're buying a box from ABM that manages all your facility needs." Every solution is scoped to the specific environment, the specific goals, and the specific complexity of the client's operation. consolidate services under a single provider.
The integrated facility services model frees up facilities leaders for a more valuable position: outcome ownership. Rather than coordinating multiple providers, facilities leaders consolidate services under a single accountable structure, one that is responsible not just for delivering tasks, but for delivering performance.
“Our clients are not looking for us to just provide facility services,” Burnier says. “They’re looking for us to help them achieve their business goals.” Under the IFS model, facilities becomes a performance driver.
IFS enables managers to:
- Monitor assets in real time
- Identify failure patterns before they disrupt operations
- Optimize energy use dynamically
- Extend asset lifecycles through data-driven maintenance
This shift is less about technology adoption and more about operational design. Technology only delivers value when paired with clear ownership, standardized processes, and the ability to act quickly across services.
IFS meets several mandates at once
Burnier is direct about what's driving the shift toward integrated models: "The three things I see are cost, talent,and performance of your facility." Of those three, talent may be the mosturgent. "Skilled labor is a gap today," he said. "The way that we're developing talent within ABM allows us to flex that with new contracts."
Facilities leaders who move toward integrated models gain four critical advantages:
- Visibility: a unified view of performance across sites and services
- Responsiveness: the ability to reallocate resources quickly as conditions change
- Accountability: a single point of ownership for outcomes
- Access to talent: the ability to tap into deeper, more flexible pools of skilled labor, scaling expertise up or down as operational needs evolve
In other words, this shift is about control—not in the sense of micromanagement, but in the ability to see, decide, and act with clarity. This is particularly valuable in complex, multi-site environments where even small inefficiencies scale quickly.
What’s at stake
Facilities play a much larger role in determining the overall performance of the business. In manufacturing, downtime impacts revenue. In life sciences, it affects compliance. In commercial real estate, it shapes tenant retention. In higher education, it influences enrollment and experience.
Yet many organizations are still running facilities through a model optimized for an era defined by stable operations,predictable demand, and abundant labor.
That era is gone.
The leaders who recognize this are not just looking to reduce cost. They are rethinking how facilities operate as a system: how decisions are made, how performance is measured, and how outcomes are delivered. Implementing an integrated facility services approach satisfies each of those needs.
