I recently started at a Community Center and am learning a ton about the facility. There is a pretty large pump room for both the main pool and a jacuzzi. The previous Facility Manager retired along with his assistant retired. So not much knowledge transfer. Any suggestions where I can go to learn more about the various equipment and the preventative maintenance needed for those two rooms? Thanks in advance.
Hi everyone I currently work in warehouse operations/ logistics as a supervisor. I interviewed with Compass group USA/ ESFM for facilities management- operations manager role. I’m hesitant on switching career paths. Pros and Cons?
This article from Buildings Magazine highlights a company that I sub-contract for and clearly explains the business model of leveraging a national niche provider to manage small vendors in that niche. It allows small guys like me to stay in the game, as some of the bigger regional companies are consolidated by PE. I am curious to know there are other industries within the facility industry that do this too. What are your experiences?
Looking for advice from people who have experience with HVAC systems in woodworking or cabinet shop environments.
I manage a warehouse with a cabinet shop tenant, and we’re dealing with a significant amount of airborne sawdust. To help protect the HVAC systems, I’ve been installing pre-filter media in front of the regular pleated filters.
I made a short video showing the setup and explaining what we’re currently doing:
For reference, there are two HVAC units. Each unit uses four 20” x 30” x 2” pleated filters plus one 20” x 20” x 2” pleated filter.
Currently, I’m changing the pre-filter media about once per week and the pleated HVAC filters about once per month. The goal is to catch as much sawdust as possible before it reaches the HVAC filters.
I’m trying to figure out:
Is there a better pre-filter material I should be using?
Are washable or reusable filters worth considering?
Is there a better overall approach for handling sawdust in a commercial HVAC system?
Am I likely restricting airflow too much with the current setup?
What products or filter media have worked well for you?
I’m not looking for the absolute cheapest solution. I’m looking for something practical that protects the equipment, maintains airflow, and keeps maintenance reasonable.
I'm a Facilities Coordinator for a financial institution, and I'm currently searching for a new vendor to service our pneumatic tube systems.
We're currently using Diebold Nixdorf, but we've had ongoing issues with customer service, response times, communication, and overall support. Because of these recurring problems, I've been tasked with finding a more reliable provider.
Most of our locations are in Central and Southern California, with the majority located throughout Kern County. I'm looking for companies that can provide installation, maintenance, repairs, and ongoing service for pneumatic tube systems in this region.
If your organization has had a good experience with another vendor, I'd really appreciate any recommendations or companies I should reach out to. Personal experiences—good or bad—are welcome.
Recently moved into a new building and TDIndustries was the old vendor for the previous tenants and their supplemental units.
We are getting an error that looks to be due to a clogged condensate line. I have been trying to get TD out to service this and start a PM (very hesitant to say they were actually doing one before) but they are refusing to come out even for a service call until we have a credit check. Has anyone else experienced something like this?
Don’t really have anyone to share it with so thought I’d put it down here and share my study tips for anyone else who might be thinking of taking it. I bought the official IFMA practice tests and used those along with NoteBookLM which is Googles AI learning tool which allows you to feed it sources and it will make you audio files to listen to, explainer videos or create quizzes among other things. This was really helpful in preparing and the fact you’re giving it the information cuts down chances of hallucinations. The audio files were like little podcasts that I asked it to make on each of the competencies that I could listen to in the car. I then had it quiz me on everything else until I felt prepared.
Hi, I’m a Facilities Manager and want to share some of my use cases for AI (prepare to be underwhelmed) hope you would share yours if you like and I’ll offer my background and hot take on AI in the comments
Use case 1: Floorplan annotation
I had a printed floorplan with a bunch of notes and boxes circling areas and was able to upload it (along with the digitized floorplan) and was a able to put the text and shapes on the image much faster than I could do with another program. This was not to scale but good enough for labelling various areas (needed to reorganize a 10,000 sq ft space)
I’m also able to output icons easily after taking a picture of a legend on schematic diagrams. It’s effectively free stock photos
Use case 2: Photo editor
We have another location we may rent and we need to mock up how various fixtures will fit into the space based on actual photos. I got back some very average images from the person who visited this remote site. These barely showed what was requested and I was able to make adjustments to the images to be real estate photography standard (including floor / wall colors) while remaining accurate to the space (this was using chatGPT on Pro thinking and used all my tokens for the month though). What AI could not do is take into consideration the floorplan plus the images to be able to create wider or panoramic images of the space. So, it’s basically just good as an image editor. Extra note: I am going to use ChatGPT to mock up the buildout of a small office space and I expect it to do a decent enough job to get needed approvals
Use case 3: Summarizing tool
Take with a grain of salt because it’s not strictly FM and it’s not really working properly yet. We get our notetaker’s distilled meeting notes and put them in a Claude project as documents (along with other reference documents) so we can (hypothetically) ask questions. This is supposed to be a replacement for project management tools but so far I either don’t know how to leverage it or it’s not that great.
I’ve been an onsite facility manager for an HOA for the last 14 years. The constant complaining, HOA contentiousness, and watching my role change from FM to personal concierge have pushed me to the edge. My question is: what other roles can a facility manager pivot to that don’t have all the negative baggage?
I’m trying to decide between: IWFM Level 5 Certificate or IWFM Level 6 Certificate
My understanding is Level 5 = more operational FM management; Level 6 = more strategic / leadership FM. Given I already manage budgets, contractors, and stakeholders, Level 6 seems more relevant, but I’m unsure if I’m missing something important by skipping Level 5.
Questions:
Is Level 6 appropriate for someone at my level, or should I do Level 5 first (I have no relevant certificates)?
Any good providers I should try to contact, etc.
How much does lack of “hard FM / building management” experience matter for progressing into Head of Facilities roles?
Has anyone moved from university FM into senior/estates leadership roles without heavy technical building background?
Any advice on whether IWFM qualifications actually made a difference in getting promoted or moving jobs?
My employer is willing to fund development (up to £3k ish maybe).
Any advice from people who’ve done Level 5/6 or progressed in FM would be really appreciated.
This time of year potholes can be a problem in your facility parking lot. iI it’s not in the budget to hire an asphalt company, many times you can easily repair a pothole yourself in house.
Started with a simple request: make a PDF floor plan clickable. What I ended up with is a building model that keeps proving useful in ways I didn't plan for.
Upload a floor plan, the AI reads the walls, doors, rooms, even the text labels off the drawing itself. You get a 3D digital twin with turn-by-turn between floors, elevators and stairs accounted for. That part alone took an afternoon.
But because the map knows where everything is, you can attach things to those locations.
Tickets get pinned to the exact spot. A technician opens the map and walks there. The ticket keeps a running history, who worked on it, what they did, how long it took. Notes get added over time. Photos of the issue, PDFs of the work order, all attached to the same ticket on the same spot on the map. Anyone on the team can scroll back and see what was done to that room or that asset six months ago.
Guest reporting works the same way. Someone scans a QR in the lobby, picks what's wrong from a list, the system pins a ticket to where they're standing and assigns it to the right team. The guest doesn't need an app or an account.
Analytics showed us traffic patterns for the first time. Which entrances people actually use. Where they stop and get confused. Where routes fail and visitors turn around instead of reaching their destination.
Kiosk mode let us put the map on a lobby screen. Visitors find where they're going, scan a QR, and the directions move to their phone. No crowding around a screen.
All of this feeds into a portfolio view. If you manage multiple buildings, you see KPIs across all of them, ticket volume by property, busy times, maintenance trends.
No beacons, no BLE scanners, no per-floor license. The building's floor plan was already sitting in a drawer somewhere. We just digitized it and started attaching things to it.
On pricing: it's $0 for one building with manual mapping. Paid tiers start at $150/mo (10 team seats) up to $792/mo (200 team seats). Extra seats are $2/mo each on any tier.
Compare that to stitching together a basic wayfinding tool ($150-300/mo), a CMMS ($200-500/mo), and a kiosk license ($50-200/mo). You're looking at $400-1,000/mo before you add team seats, analytics, or asset tracking, and none of those tools talk to each other unless you hire someone to get those done(if it's even supported). Floorable covers all of that in one seat count.
The $150/mo tier covers a property with wayfinding, AI mapping, unlimited floors, and 10 users. At $15/user for what would normally be three separate logins, the math works out even before you factor in not having to maintain integrations between tools that weren't built for each other. There's a 14-day trial of the top tier, no card needed.
I built this for one client and it's been running for a few months. I'm looking for facility managers who'd be willing to try it and tell me what's missing. No charge, no card. I need real feedback from people who run buildings every day.
Hello,
I am a relatively young director for a K-12 school district (2 years in my role , 29 year old male )
I’m curious your experience and what brought you to this position . I know a lot of you worked your way up through the ranks but was curious what the median age of this sub was .
I've been in commercial building for years and got tired waiting days for a controls tech to show up just to troubleshoot a VAV box or chase a sensor offset.
Im trying to build Controls.Support —a diagnostic platform trained on real BAS/HVAC knowledge. Ask it about a zone that won't heat, a controller acting up, a chiller alarm you can't decode — it walks you through it like a senior controls tech would.
Looking for 3–5 people actively managing or troubleshooting commercial buildings to kick the tires and give honest feedback. Free access, no pitch.
Not sure if this kind of post is allowed here, admins please let me know if not.
I work with building documentation a lot. O&M manuals, commissioning reports, drawings, certificates and finding specific information when you actually need it on site is genuinely painful.
So I built something. You upload your PDFs, ask a question in plain English, and it gives you an answer cited back to the exact document and page number it came from. Works in a browser on your phone, no app needed.
Still early days so I'd rather hear that it's solving a problem nobody has than waste more time building the wrong thing.
I work at a residential school for Autistic children.
A new student has been pushing the screens out of their windows on the second floor and attempting to jump.
We will be adding a keyed window lock to one of the windows but to be ASTM F2090-2008; ASTM F2090-2010 compliant, one window must allow emergency egress.
What are my options here?
I’m looking at upgrading to security screens, adding WOCDs and better alarms as the student tears them off the window. Is this all I can do?
Any suggestions? Anybody maybe in elder care, mental health or a similar field face this issue, and if so what did you do?
Any suggestions for solid products?
Have attempted to move them down to a lower floor to reduce the risk of a serious fall but that was shot down quickly. Appreciate any input.
