AI is reshaping facility management, but only when paired with high-quality data and human expertise. In this episode, IFMA Global Influencer Brian Haines breaks down what AI can — and can’t — do for FMs, and why now is the most exciting time to grow in the profession.
What does AI really mean for the future of facility management, and how can FMs stay essential as technology accelerates?
In this episode, host Edward Wagoner talks with Brian Haines, IFMA Global Influencer and longtime real estate and technology strategist. Brian breaks down why AI is only as good as the data behind it, how natural-language tools are transforming daily FM work, and why maintaining professional expertise is more important than ever.
They explore the growing convergence of IT and operational technology, the potential for autonomous buildings, and the upskilling FMs need to stay ahead. Brian also shares advice for veterans, young professionals and anyone entering the field. Plus his outlook on how AI will shape the future of facility management.
00:00 Introduction
00:53 Exploring AI in Facility Management
01:44 Interview with Brian Haines
05:09 The Role of Data in AI
09:24 AI's Impact on Facility Management
17:23 Autonomous Building Control
25:09 Veterans in Facility Management
35:42 Future of Facility Management
38:36 Conclusion
Sponsor:
This episode is sponsored by ODP Business Solutions!
Brian Haines: [00:00:00] AI in the absence of good data is pretty much useless. It's like taking a human being who grew up on an island with no exposure to the rest of the world ever,your limited view of the world and knowledge of the world is gonna be. Like I said, limited based upon that experience. AI is the same way.
If you give it small data sets, it's gonna give you small answers. If you give it inaccurate data sets, it's gonna give you inaccurate answers. It's no different than a human that way.
Host: Welcome to Connected FM, a podcast connecting you to the latest insights, tools, and resources to help you succeed in facility management. This podcast is brought to you by IFMA, the leading professional association for facility managers. If you are ready to grow your network and advance in your career.
Go to ifma.org to get started. Today's episode asks an important question, what does AI really mean for facility management? [00:01:00] In today's episode, host Edward Wagoner sits down with Brian Haines, a recently named IFMA Global Influencer, and a longtime real estate and technology strategist. Brian breaks down why AI is only as good as the data behind it, how natural language tools are transforming daily facility management work.
And why? Maintaining professional expertise is more important than ever. They also explore the growing convergence of IT and operational technology, the potential for autonomous buildings, and he also shares advice for veterans, young professionals, and anyone entering the field. Now, let's get into it.
Edward Wagoner: Welcome to the Connected FM podcast, Brian, and congratulations on being named an IFMA Global influencer.
Brian Haines: Thanks, Eddie. It's pretty exciting. I don't think I've ever been a global influencer before, so this is pretty cool. As a matter of fact, I think probably [00:02:00] three quarters of my time in my career, there was no such thing as an influencer, so it's pretty cool. So it's a lot of
Edward Wagoner: you and I have worked together, you know, around each other for a very long time, and I can say the influence that you and the teams that you worked with has certainly had an impact on me and the technologies we use to deliver services to clients. So super happy to see you with this recognition,
we literally have a who's who of the world's facility management professionals listening to us. 130 chapters around the world. So with that global audience and being named a global influencer, why don't I give you the mic and influences.
Tell us what's top of your mind right now.
Brian Haines: Yeah,
Eddie I think there's probably never been a more exciting time. To be in our profession. I've seen over the course of three decades of being in this profession from a variety of different angles, starting in architecture, then going into space and occupancy planning, then moving into technology.
For the majority of my career, I've seen a number of significant [00:03:00] changes happen, and right now I'm seeing. Two that are really kind of capturing my imagination as we look forward into the sort of the way that we accelerate our profession going forward in our understanding. And that's really, you know, everyone's heard ai.
I'll talk a little bit about AI from a, from an interesting perspective, I think. That's one of the things I think that's fundamentally changing the way we do our jobs and our business and the way we can really up level in terms of our knowledge, et cetera. And the other is a convergence of IT information technology and ot sort of operational technology right now for those in the audience who are in projects right now where they may be implementing technology or trying to choose technology, whether it be.
Software technology or hardware technology or building systems, technology. You've got it. People involved with that purchasing decision in a way that I've never seen in our career. It's a lot of things. It's safety and security. It's, they wanna make sure that it meets corporate standards. They wanna make sure, obviously, that [00:04:00] you're not gonna get penetrated by external bad parties.
There's a lot of things that are happening. Right now that I think are kind of creating a new category within facilities management and that is sort of the top level it FM expert. And that's something Eddie that I think right now is really top of mind for me.
Edward Wagoner: Well, I love it. Let's dive into one of those topics. Which one do you want to to start with or approach First.
Brian Haines: Sure.
And it's interesting because I do this so much. I think about these things so much. That's who I am, right? I'm a thinker, I'm a strategist. That's who I am. I'm not a detail oriented person. I often find myself thinking about this pretty much all the time or at the oddest times. And I'm a, I'm also a, like, I don't know if you remember that book, like worst case scenario. There's a book from way back like 20 years ago and I'm sort of a worst case scenario kind of planner kind of person. And I think about the good and the bad and I always, I think I present those things when I talk and I talk a lot about this.
From a positive [00:05:00] standpoint, even when I'm gonna give some cautionary tales, I think it's through a positive lens and I'll tell you what the story is around AI that excites me so much. First of all, there's a lot of things that artificial intelligence can do for us. Many of us have had heavily curated systems at our fingertips.
For decades, you know, IWMS systems, CAFM Systems, CMMS, where organizations have put massive amounts of information into those systems. Getting that data out has always been quite a bit of a challenge, and it was really sort of reserved for the expert, right? The person who could look at a complex dashboard and say, ah, I can see these things happening, but it really wasn't for the massive.
I think AI is sort of the great equalizer because you can simply ask it to explain what you're seeing and it's going to do it as long as it's been giving good inputs, it's going to learn to give you better outputs, and that's something that [00:06:00] I am really noticing right now is that we have the ability to be able to ask questions.
Literally and get answers within seconds or minutes. Perhaps even with diagrams, there's, you know, the ability to be able to do generative AI and create diagrams in a way that gives us answers to questions that would've taken months when I was a space and occupancy planner back in the day at the University of Arizona, if I had to do spatial analysis.
And the director of the department would ask me for something that wasn't sort of like already canned to the side and I had to do analysis. It would take spreadsheets in probably months to complete that work. And then double checking making sure there's not induced human error. I can do much more complex analysis now with ai and far less time.
We're talking seconds in getting answers and output.
Edward Wagoner: There's so much that comes. To mind as you're talking, there was a phrase you said, as long as you have good inputs, and [00:07:00] I think about a lot of people who, you know as we were giving the message, you and I, both through our different roles, you know, clean up your data, have good data management.
You know, even in some cases, in some of the systems that we used at FM systems, we were telling people, put your data in the system. Stop doing it on your clipboards and off to the side. You know, AI is not the silver bullet. You still need some discipline around your data.
You just need to make sure that you're feeding the right data and training your AI models correctly. I think that's one point. And then the second one is and I don't wanna set you up with this question and then tell you that Peter Anchor Stern said this, so I'll tell you upfront.
He said that, you know, it's not AI that's gonna steal your job. It's the person beside of you that learns to use AI better. So I'd like to get your reaction to both of those first about, you know, the data or take it in whichever order you like. And then, you know, there's a lot of anxiety from a lot of people about.
If AI can do it faster and do [00:08:00] it better and do it potentially cheaper, the role for me? So, you know, especially as a chief strategist where I know you're thinking about those things, what would you say to people in the industry right now that are really worried about their jobs With the advent of ai?
Brian Haines: Sure. Well, AI in the absence of good data is pretty much useless. It's like taking a human being who grew up on an island with no exposure to the rest of the world ever, your limited view of the world and knowledge of the world is gonna be. Like I said, limited based upon that experience. AI is the same way.
If you give it small data sets, it's gonna give you small answers. If you give it inaccurate data sets, it's gonna give you inaccurate answers. It's no different than a human that way. If I think about something simple, like if I ask ai what the history of the United States is, and I only give it a spreadsheet that's got a list of all the states, and when they entered the union, I'm gonna get a really thin answer.
It's probably gonna tell me this was the first date, this was the second, right? That's what it's gonna give. If [00:09:00] I ask that same question and I exposed it to the library of Congress. For the United States, it's going to gimme a really robust historical answer, probably much more than I'm expecting, and maybe provide insights that I'm not expecting or certainly didn't know because I don't know everything that's there.
So that's sort of what the way I think about ai, it's as good as the data that's flowing into it. And therein also lies what I think is the cautionary tale, and this is something that I worry about in our profession and something that I'm recommending. We need to make sure that we're maintaining our chops in terms of our expertise at our specific jobs.
We need to still understand how our equipment operates. We need to still understand what's good and what's bad in terms of occupancy and utilization levels, maintenance, cost, history, and real estate costs. All of those things we need to still understand that those things are valuable and important. We need to be able to [00:10:00] understand if a project is off cost, we need to see if it's under, you know, if it's off schedule.
And we need to understand those things. And the reason being is that because we can get these answers really quickly from AI and AI tech systems that we have access to we need to still be the adult in the room and read it and make sure that the output makes sense. That's the dangerous part, is that we.
Use AI as a crutch and assume that everything we're getting is exactly right. I use it every single day. I use it within applications that I have access to. On the flip side, I need to make sure that when I look at the results that I'm getting an answer that makes sense.
I think it can make us better, but we also have to ride alongside of those answers like we're a partner, you know, make sure we're checking our work before we just put it out there. Or there's gonna be some, there's gonna be some embarrassments.
You know, I've seen a lot. Of output, especially when I'm looking, [00:11:00] I can tell you when I'm looking at articles written for a lot of publications, especially, you know, when you log into your computer and sometimes, or your phone, you get that sort of like list of, you're seeing all of these new outlets or news that you don't recognize and you know, something captures your attention because it's something you're interested in and you immediately want to click on it and read it.
I can tell you right away. Not right away, but often I could tell you if AI wrote it
Edward Wagoner: Yep.
Brian Haines: right? It's got, it repeats itself, it's got inaccuracies, it's got things in there. Maybe I could tell that it's just conjecture. It's not based upon fact. And that's why I think, Eddie, you know, we need to maintain not only our professional skills so that we can make sure we're checking our work, but also our cognitive skills so that we understand what's good and what's bad, right.
Edward Wagoner: Yeah, there's so much that jumps out at me in what you said, you know, I, it resonated with me when you said that as a strategy officer you about things.
[00:12:00] And it's more the ideas and the concepts, and I often think of myself very similarly. It's probably why I would get along. I think I spot trends or I'm always the what if, but the teams I have worked with for decades would tell you that quite often they would tell a client, here's what Eddie talked about and promised, here's how we're going to implement and deliver it.
I have always needed people that could take the things that I said from an innovation or a strategic thinking perspective. I've needed to partner with people who had a skill at implementing, you know, change management, and then the people that are gonna operate. And those are the people that have the expertise that can come in and say, you know what?
This doesn't look right. Or, based on my experience in this building, or using this data the old ways, or what I know about the building management system, something doesn't. Sound right. And I think, you know, make sure I'm not putting words in your mouth, but that's something that I heard is that people maybe that they don't have to be like us spotting the trends.
They maybe even [00:13:00] don't need to be proficient at implementing AI in their organizations, but they'll have a real skill at saying, you know what? I've just read this. It doesn't feel right. Something feels like it's missing or something is wrong. Am I hearing you correctly with that?
Brian Haines: Yeah, absolutely. Hearing me correctly with that, and it's like always goes down to checking your work, right? And making sure that you're validating the facts that you're gonna be presenting. It's really, I'm seeing it more and more often when I'm looking at presentations. And I think we've gotta be very careful there because. We've gotta make sure that when you're up there and you're presenting, you're doing it with a high level of credibility. And I think this is the opportunity for us as a profession to sort of just keep upleveling, right?
We're not, you know, there's this persona in the industry, boiler room, Bob, you know, it's the guy who's been down in the, who's been down in the basement of the building for 30 years working on stuff, and he's got a wrench in his pocket and all of those kinds of things. It's kind of like a meme now, right?
That's not who we are anymore. There's of course, the technicians and people doing all of that work, [00:14:00] but even they have access to immense amount of information. I mean, it's crazy what you can ask. When you're looking and you're diagnosing a problem, ask ai, you know, what are the top five things that could go wrong that are causing this?
And you're gonna get answers, and it's gonna give you a starting point. That's what I really think is great about ai. It helps you kind of get rid of the clutter and get maybe a starting point for going your analysis of looking for the answers that you're looking for.
Edward Wagoner: So Brian, you know, I love how you talked about, you know, you referenced Boiler Room, Bob, as an example, and I think what I'm hearing is you and I can talk about AI all day long.
We can even implement it, but unless the people that have actually worked for decades. You know, in the mechanical part of the building, the ones that could take an HVA system apart and put it back together without the manual, without them looking at the data and working with the systems and telling us, this is right, this is wrong, this doesn't feel right.[00:15:00]
We'll never be successful with AI in real estate. So those people are absolutely critical to that success. So you mentioned upleveling, upskilling. What would you say to those people that they should start looking at or learning or reviewing? So they're a little more comfortable to play their part in this AI implementation?
Brian Haines: Yeah, I think a couple of things. One is a lot of the solutions that are coming out into the market now have some sort of AI component. The easiest thing they have is a natural language component. And what I mean by that is the sim, the ability to simply be able to talk to the software or the hardware and get answers back in ways that are not complex.
You don't have to have a data analyst, you don't have to have somebody who's really good with spreadsheets. You can simply ask, and I think that takes Boiler room, Bob outta the basement. Honestly, it kind of moves him much closer to like senior leadership in a lot of different ways because you have access.
Regardless of where you are in your profession, you have access to more information [00:16:00] now at your fingertips than anytime in history. This idea that you've got that one person. Who has like the most valuable information, and if anything ever happens to that person, we're all doomed. That's just not true anymore.
The ability for all of us to have access to that information is of value, but we also need to maintain the expertise that we have in the industry. I think we're all, AI gives us all a chance to uplevel. It's really interesting how we can all get better at what we do by leveraging this technology.
Edward Wagoner: Listening to you talk about the opportunities and, you know, we're still talking ai, but this is like a much larger opportunity for those of us in real estate than we've probably seen at any point in our careers.
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Brian Haines: Well, to me it's no surprise that the, that we've seen a lot of consolidation in the market, the largest building systems. We had 4 billion square feet of curated global real estate data ranging from space and occupancy planning to maintenance, to lease data. And it's really because. When we take that data and we blend it with what's above the ceiling, so think about all the data below the ceiling, what people are doing, what assets that we have, how well are they being used?
Do I have a conference room available on Tuesday? What's the air quality of the room? Are the lights on? All of that kind of stuff. When you blend it with how the building is controlled, you have an [00:18:00] amazing ability to be able to do things such as what we're all looking for. It is autonomous building control.
It sounds kind of scary, but the truth is, imagine the power in that, Eddie. Every time I travel, which is often, I'm in London, I'm in New York, I'm in Paris, it doesn't matter where I am at 10 o'clock at night, it doesn't matter what their ESG initiatives are. You know, environmental sustainability initiatives, how much energy they wanna save.
If I look out a window, there's lights on everywhere. There's buildings that are on and no one's in them. Represents 40% of the global carbon footprint. We have an opportunity just through simply having buildings shut themselves down or maybe floors shutting themselves down or elevators not, you know, in operation when no one's there to use them.
Imagine the amount of energy we can save by simply turning, it's like turning the lights off when you leave the room, except at a much, much larger scale. When you apply AI and the learning of that, the building actually starts to learn and understand it's not [00:19:00] just about when people are there, but it's about the weather.
Is it gonna be hot on Tuesday? Is it gonna be cold? Is it gonna be raining? Is it gonna be snowing? And start to bring the building up and down. Do I have a meeting with Eddie and six other people at three o'clock on a Thursday? What room am I gonna be in? Bring that room up. Set the conditions of the room in terms of air and indoor air quality, understanding that there's gonna be eight occupants.
Turn the lights on, put the blinds down. It's amazing what building automation could do, and it's really gonna be powered by this blend of data you know, below the ceiling. Above the ceiling, if you understand what I'm saying there. It's like the building systems above what we all never see. It's the problems that occur.
It's why things drip out of the ceiling. It's why suddenly the room is hot when it's supposed to be cool. Like that's all sort of the building control system, right? Blending that with data below the ceiling is absolutely changing our industry right now.
Edward Wagoner: I love the way you say above the ceiling and below the ceiling. I've [00:20:00] always said front office and back office, and I like the way you frame it better because in a lot of ways there is a higher opportunity leverage the data above the ceiling to drive some efficiencies in our portfolios and to drive sustainability,
Brian Haines: That data, is now available to all of us, not just the building engineer, but through. Systems and technology and blending using AI to understand the correlations between the two. We're really getting kind of really interesting views, right? It's not just about like your maintenance costs, but it's your maintenance costs and laying over top of it, how the building's being used, what the depreciation level of your assets are, what are the maintenance costs, what are your project costs, what are your capital costs?
What all of that stuff. Can be brought together in views that blend in how the building is controlling itself in ways that give us some of the craziest answers to questions that we may not have ever thought about asking, which is kind of fascinating.
Edward Wagoner: Let's be real [00:21:00] for a minute. You're the chief strategist at one of the world's largest real estate companies, you know, technology companies. So you see a lot of things in the lab and the art of the possible and the technology that actually is working inside FM systems and Johnson controls.
But. How many companies have actually implemented that and are getting the benefits that you see? Have we just scratched the surface or are there companies out there that are really, they're like all in. You wouldn't believe what they're doing.
What's the state of the industry with leveraging that data that you just talked about?
Brian Haines: It's interesting because it's just like a Gartner hype cycle, if you're familiar with that. Of course you're familiar with that. The, there are people who are laggards and they're gonna be late adopters, and there's people who are early adopters. I think in a lot of ways we're really sort of just getting past the early adopter phase.
A lot of solutions that customers are already using in the market is already using, are starting to get AI capabilities. What's amazing is that you can introduce AI like capabilities really [00:22:00] quickly. And now we're seeing something that's really kind of flipping me out a little bit, Eddie, and that is AI actually writing code or reviewing your code very quickly and allowing organizations to produce solutions at a much, much faster rate and improve those solutions.
That's happening. It's really happening. I've seen solutions written by AI that then has. Human programmers evaluate the results, and that's happening really quickly. So this kind of capability is already making its way into a lot of the solutions that we're already using. IWMS vendors, CMMS vendors, room and desk booking vendors.
Everybody's got a little bit of this, right? It's what you read about when you go to their website. And the way most of them started is through, you know, this natural language interface. The ability to be able to just, instead of having to produce a report and understand how reports are built. Queries and all of that kind of stuff.
Natural language simply allows you to be able to ask questions and then all of that complicated stuff is done on the back end by the ai and it gives you [00:23:00] the those answers and allows you to refine your answer. Going back to my previous point, we need to be careful and we need to be the adult in the room because as we start leaning on that crutch and letting these systems make their own decisions, we need to always make sure that one we're paying attention, right?
Because we need that. We're the experts. We need to continue to be the experts and understand whether or not. That's the right thing. And then the organization itself has to ask itself what are its guidelines in terms of AI usage within their organization. Like, are we just gonna let the buildings go run off and control themselves, or are we gonna have policies and procedures in place that allow us to always stay in the loop?
Right. Human in the loop is a really good idea for now and into the distant future,
Edward Wagoner: This conversation has reminded me of every. A science fiction movie that I've ever seen where the robots of the computers take over. You know, we're not too far from probably a horror story about that, where humans didn't stay involved, [00:24:00] let the computer do
Brian Haines: Abso, I mean, it's possible,
right? It's possible right now. It's absolutely possible right now. I really think though we have an opportunity as a profession, right? We can't control the world, but we can simply understand and control our profession. That we just decide as a group that we're gonna stay involved, right?
We're gonna understand what this stuff does, what its benefits, what its value is. But we're also gonna just say best policy, best procedures is that I'll go back to what I said earlier, always check your work, make sure that you've got an expert and you maintain your expertise. It's absolutely critical.
Edward Wagoner: I love that. And I love, you're just continually reinforcing. There's a place for everyone in facilities management in the AI world. It's just up level. Be involved, stay focused, keep working with it, keep learning.
I, I referenced those movies of the horror situations and I'm thinking of a really old one. You may remember it's [00:25:00] war games where the computers
Brian Haines: Oh yes.
Edward Wagoner: start nuclear war, and that's kind of a segue
Brian Haines: way to win is not to play or whatever it is at the end, right? Something.
Edward Wagoner: That's right. But I, you know, I'm reminded that people may not realize that you actually you're a veteran, thank you for your service, but you spent time on a submarine and I can't imagine anything more claustrophobic or confining.
Than that. And then you were in space planning, so there's a lot of like
Brian Haines: Yeah.
Edward Wagoner: space in your career. Talk a little bit about how your service, your military service has benefited you and prepared you for your role. And also what would you say to people who are considering leaving service and coming back into the private sector and should they consider real estate, should they consider.
You know, engineering in the buildings, considering the upheaval we're going with ai, is it a good opportunity?
Brian Haines: Yeah, well think about it. I was inside of a. 300 foot steel pipe. That was a [00:26:00] nuclear power plant. Probably one of the most intense physical plants. In the world. I can't imagine something more complicated, squeezed in such a small space that had to also you know, provide a living environment for 120.
So I've been in spaces, Eddie, that you would've had to cut me out with a blow torch if I couldn't have figured my way out. It's tight. Right? And I've never had an issue with that, but I understand the panic
Edward Wagoner: just, I'm breaking out in sweat. I dunno if you can see it.
Brian Haines: It is the absolute truth. And I've also often said that's why I didn't make a good architect.
So I have a degree in architecture and I did my internships and you know, I always think that people. Have far more space than they actually need. And I could tell you, I am a space optimizer. It's no mystery. How, you know, how I ended up where I am, where space optimization and looking at it at a very fun level has become my career because, gosh, I, I could tell you, I, I can't even someday when we're together, I'm gonna show you exactly how much [00:27:00] space you would have to.
Do something and then let's see if you can actually do it and you're gonna be astounded. It's like it's hard to even turn around, much less get anything done, which is amazing. And then you've gotta like open equipment racks and pull those out where you were just standing because it's the only place that you could stand.
It's really complicated. I will say that's the value, right, of being a veteran. You've been in these kinds of situations. You've had to lead through diversity. In amazingly complex ways, whether or not you're in the field or you're on a ship or you're, you know, in any kind of equipment that's used to de deliver military capabilities, you have been placed in a high stress environment where you had to do a lot with very little, and you had to make decisions based upon, you know, what you had available at your fingertips. It's was not possible. When I was on a submarine to call Amazon and get a part, you had to fix it, right? And [00:28:00] that continues to be the case every single day. Now, availability of parts and all that kind of things is certainly optimized in much better ways than it was in the past.
But the truth is, at a very young age, we are enabling professionals within the military to have greater responsibility. Greater access to being able to learn with your hands on things because you just do, when you're in the military environment, there's no way that you're just like hanging out, right?
You're actually somebody who's a person of action. You've got responsibilities at a young age. You're able to make decisions under pressure and you're able to make do with what you have. Those four things right there. I mean, come on. It's like every. Facility management professional who's a leader, to have those kinds of people on your team, those kinds of people who could say, you know what?
We can solve this problem. I've solved much bigger problems, and I can do this, and I can do it in a way that's cost effective, a way [00:29:00] that's good for occupants of our facilities. That's gonna keep our systems up and running. We're not gonna have to turn our building off while we fix this problem. I've figured out a way to sort of like.
Maybe move people for a little while and do all of these sort of complex operations. That's the kind of thinking that you're going to get out of somebody who's a veteran. I remember being, you know, 2021 and, you know, being asked to stand in front of the the commanding officer of my submarine and give answers to tough questions.
And he was listening. I mean, 2021. I'm not talking about somebody who's in, who. I was in that profession for 30 or 40 years. Because that actually doesn't happen in that environment, right? You're there for much shorter periods of time, but you're expected to operate as if you're a veteran, right?
Not talking military veteran, but a veteran of the position that you're doing. So that's another thing that I learned is that is never be afraid to tell people from a, you know, obviously from a position of respect and also from a [00:30:00] position of knowledge. What you think and volunteer that, listen I've seen this problem before, or I'm thinking of it this way.
And just be very straightforward and don't be shy about the fact that you know what the answer is or you know, what the recommendation should be. I think that is really a cool capability that I've been able to bring into my profession. And there's a little bit of a sense of fearlessness as well, right?
That you bring when you've been in very tough situations that I think brings a lot of value. So I'm proud
of that experience and I think it's done some interesting things for my career.
Edward Wagoner: I had a vet tell me once that there was nothing I could throw at him that he had not experienced. Having flown in a plane at a low level being shot at. He's like, there's just really nothing you can throw that would. Throw at me, that would throw me off balance. Brian, I love that answer. And, you know, while we're talking about you and your US military service, I also wanna point out that. Ifma being global. The big facility management firms are global. No matter what country in the world you're in, if you're [00:31:00] a veteran, there are opportunities.
So I would encourage people to look at if a's website or go to the big facility management companies, look at their website, they all have active veteran recruiting services. And there's a, an opportunity, as you pointed out. Every building you see. So for veterans that are looking for opportunities in the private sector or considering career changes, perhaps don't overlook
facility management. As an ifma global influencer, who influences you?
Brian Haines: You know, in my career I always think about one certain person who influenced me, especially when it comes to ifma and the level of this profession and what we can give back, and that's Michael Schlei, the founder of FM Systems, who's an IFMA fellow and retired now. The way he built a company, the ethics the giving back.
He was always such an advocate of the ifma Foundation. But outside of [00:32:00] ifma donating computers to Haiti and creating training material to uplevel the experience and knowledge of people in countries than the one that we're in. It's been something that has.
Always influenced the way I think, and how I think about ifma is not just. You know, a global organization that focuses on the expertise of our industry, but it focuses on a lot more. If you ever follow cha, like I, I've been to a lot of chapter meetings to present, and the cool stuff that they do in their communities is absolutely just motivating to me and inspirational to me.
I think it's because when I looked at Mike, especially when I entered into FM systems. Quite a long time ago now. He really showed me what it meant to run a good business you know, when you're, it, it's interesting 'cause we always talk about this thing called the gray areas.
The gray areas are where like right and wrong is, it's like it's in a gray area, right? Like, what do we do? Do we do [00:33:00] this or we do that? And he always had this philosophy of leaning towards what you felt was right. The right thing for everyone. It was the client. It was for your employees. It was for the industry.
It was for the building. It was always leaning towards like that, saying what are, what's the right thing to do? And that really has influenced me.
Edward Wagoner: I love that the thinking beyond is something I took away. Thinking beyond what we do at our. He does. What would you say to someone that's searching for a new role who's not considering facilities management? We got to that a little bit in the veteran question, but you know, I'm thinking people that are maybe in, in university right now or they are looking for other roles with some of the turmoil going on in, in companies around the world.
If they're not thinking about facility management, what would you say to them to encourage them to think about it?
Brian Haines: Well, first of all I think it's crazy that higher education doesn't have a bigger focus on having this as a professional degree program. There are some leading [00:34:00] universities like Ferris State I believe like Cornell, there's, there are universities that have programs around facilities management and I really.
So I really believe there's a room for a lot more in terms of universities actually having that as a profession, which, you know, is the way we introduce it to a lot of young people. A lot of young people go to college and they don't even realize, they don't even realize that there's a profession and what I think is the world's greatest profession that helps maintain.
Where we are every single day. We spend the majority of our lives inside of a building. It's either your home or work or whatever that may be, and those, all of those have to get maintained. A certain way. We all want really great experiences when we go shopping, when we go home or we go into work, and that is the responsibility of the facilities management profession.
I think it's like, it's exciting to me because I've been in it my whole career, that I think it's an exciting profession. It's probably one of the most exciting professions that people don't know about, which you know that it's actually a [00:35:00] profession, which I think. We as a profession, as an industry organization need to just keep pushing that, right?
We need to just keep letting people know what we do and the availability of this because it's, you know, when no one knows about it, it's hard to find the top talent. It's hard to find that person coming out of the military 'cause this is not the first place that they're looking. And they should be. It's, you know, somebody coming outta university or somebody coming outta trade school.
It's not often the first place they're looking. You know, they may be a mechanical engineer and they're thinking, oh well I have to go, you know, work for a company building phones or something like that. It's not true. There's systems and things like that you get to maintain in this profession.
Edward Wagoner: Love that answer. As we end, give me your thoughts on the future of facility management.
Brian Haines: Yeah. Well first of all, no better time to get in. And no better time to grow, right? I think now is it our access to information and technology and knowledge is unparalleled. We're introducing new technologies. The [00:36:00] convergence of it technology and operational technology, the kind of sensors that we're putting in and getting unbelievable insights into building operations is from a technologist standpoint and from a futurist standpoint.
I'm, I couldn't be more excited. I think it's a great time to get in, and it's also a great time to explore other facets of the industry. If you've been in one particular part of it, your whole career, you're able to move, right? If, especially if you're feeling like. I really have this need to grow right now, or I need to do something different.
There's so many different angles that you could take within our profession, which I think is really exciting. And the access to technology and knowledge and information, especially through things like ai. I've talked about it quite a bit. Allow you to kind of do your own research every single day.
You could do it like a daily tip. Tell me something I don't know about capital planning and it's going to, it's gonna help you do that, right? It used to be sort of, yeah. You had to find that one person who's like finding a needle in a [00:37:00] haystack who could help you or maybe read a lot of books or maybe go to classes, whatever that is.
You can do a lot of self-learning in this industry right now, and I think that is. Opportunity for all of us.
I always think of like those movies where AI gets outta control and something bad happens. I don't think about those. I think about the Star Trek, I think about the star ship enterprise in Star Trek, where we're talking to the ship as if it's another crew member.
And I believe that in our profession, our buildings are gonna be our partners and not our problems in the future because they're going to be able to tell us things and understand how they're gonna tell us how they're feeling, you know?
Edward Wagoner: I I love that I've often said that the human mind came up with Star Trek and all of the science fiction movies, and it's that same mind that's creating the technology innovations today. So, you know, there's a lot of things that we're seeing, you know, I think back on both of our careers and all that we've seen and tremendous changes in the way the industry has matured [00:38:00] and.
I don't think we've seen anything yet compared to what we're gonna see in the next couple of years as we better leverage our technology, our ai, and the integrations that we see on the horizon. Brian, thank you so much for taking time. Congratulations again on being named an IFMA Global influencer and look forward to seeing you on a future episode or at a IFMA event or World Workplace.
Brian Haines: I'm excited.
Eddie, as always, it's always a pleasure talking to you and I'm really excited to be a global influencer. It's awesome.
Edward Wagoner: Congratulations again and thanks Brian.
Brian Haines: Thank you.
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