No matter how thorough and forward thinking your energy-model may be, it’s well known that the inhabitants of any building invariably affect its energy usage and savings. We’ve all been there before, perhaps in an office building a little too cold for comfort. Rather than pestering the guy in charge of the air conditioning, a self-empowered, freezing employee decides to plug in their space heater next to their desk-- in the middle of summer. Or maybe the toilet always seems to run, but never gets fixed. Whatever the complaint may be, the cause is always the same: a building is not performing optimally for its inhabitants and results in wasted resources. Facilities management is the field dedicated to coordinating the space itself with how people use it, and optimizing user feedback with the building’s energy footprint, security and equipment.

While historically people were the only means to manage and optimize facilities, the advances of technology and the power of the internet have encouraged many software companies to address the problem themselves. An automated means of collecting user feedback on comfort levels or malfunctioning equipment and adjusting resources accordingly makes software well suited to the task. Smartphone and web applications can now easily interface with occupants to gather data, and sophisticated solutions can be computed and implemented through the cloud. Technology streamlines the ecosystem of a building by enabling better communication, more efficient use of resources, and faster response time to equipment malfunction and crises.

If you are interested in facilities management software, please sign up here to get a live one-on-one demo.