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Key Takeaways
- Organizations are under pressure to run smarter, more efficient facilities, all while reducing costs and enhancing occupant experiences.
- Integrated facility services offers data-driven insights, skilled teams, and predictive maintenance strategies to connect every aspect of facility operations.
- In this session, our panelists share real-world examples of how integrated services turn operational goals into measurable performance outcomes.
Transcript
More than 80% of facility decision-makers cite budget pressure as a top concern. Wage pressures, inflationary pressures, and labor market challenges grow more complex every year. The traditional response has been to layer on more vendors, more contracts, more coordination. But that approach is hitting a wall.
"Our clients are not looking for us to just provide facility services," said Eugenio Burnier, SVP of ABM Performance Solutions. "They're looking for us to come actually help them with their business goals." That distinction, between service delivery and outcome ownership, is exactly where integrated facility services comes into focus.
Why fragmented service models are failing facility leaders
Think about what it actually takes to run a complex facility today. Dozens of vendor relationships. Fragmented reporting. No single view of what's happening across your sites. Someone on your team is spending the bulk of their time coordinating instead of making strategic improvements.
Ashley Bradarich, Director of Business Development at ABM, put it plainly: facilities teams are used to showing up and having the day go sideways. "There's always a fire put out," she said. "They're used to calling their different vendors for different things." The result is a function that's perpetually reactive.
Integrated Facility Services (IFS) changes this dynamic. Instead of managing a fragmented vendor landscape, organizations consolidate services under a single provider.That means one contract, one accountable leader, one point of contact no matter what happens during the day. "We are the eyes and ears out there at the site," Bradarich said. "They've got that single point of contact that can manage that on their behalf."
How IFS delivers lower costs and higher performance
One of the most persistent doubts about outsourcing facilities is that you're giving something up—control, quality, performance—in exchange for cost savings.The panel pushed back on that directly.
"Our clients are getting cost savings and increased performance," said Burnier."That's the biggest thing. It's not one or the other, it's both."
The savings come from multiple places: eliminating vendor markup layers, optimizing labor through cross-functional roles, and using predictive maintenance technology to extend the life of critical assets. ABM has documented a 25% gain in equipment lifecycle through predictive maintenance alone, not through capital investment, but through smarter monitoring. In one case, real-time data analysis generated $180,000 in annual energy savings without a single capital project.
The performance gains come from accountability structures that most multi-vendor models simply can't replicate.
Self-performance is the variable most companies overlook
A lot of facility providers will tell you they manage your facility. Fewer will tell you who's actually doing the work and whether they control that work force directly.
ABM self-performs upward of 90% of its contracted work. That means faster response times, direct quality control, and a workforce that operates with what Burnier calls a "10-foot radius" mindset: every employee owns what's happening around them. If something outside their scope needs attention, they call it in. Nothing slips through the gap between vendors, because there is no gap.
It also means flexibility. "That ability to be nimble for our clients just expands upon the value that they're getting," Bradarich said. When a site needs to shift, ABM can redirect its own people. That's not a conversation you can have with a subcontractor.
Technology amplifies people. It doesn't replace them.
The facilities industry is moving fast. Today, there are autonomous floor scrubbers in airports, fully robotized distribution centers, and smart building systems generating data around the clock. The risk for facility leaders is investing in technology before the operational foundation is solid.
Bradarich was direct about the sequencing: "You've got to have the people and the process right first, and then add technology to amplify what we're doing."
When the foundation is in place, the technology impact is significant. ABM Connect™ gives facility leaders a single dashboard view of open tickets, asset health,energy performance, and service delivery in real time across every site, every region.
The future outlook: what’s next?
The IFS market is growing at double digits and is expected to outpace every other service model over the next five years. That reflects a real shift in what facility leaders need and what fragmented models can no longer deliver.
Three things drive that shift, according to the panel: cost, talent, and performance.The organizations winning on all three aren't trying to optimize the old model.They're running a different one.
The question worth sitting with: Is the way your facilities are structured today capable of supporting what your business needs from them tomorrow?
