Smart facility management: technically supported services based on emerging information and communication technology

Abstract

Facility management (FM) is a discipline that utilizes technologies to integrate management of space, process and people. Nowadays, information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as big data, the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, are driving the transformation of facility management into technically supported facility management. Despite many perceived benefits, the FM industry has been slow in discussing and adopting the ICT concept. This paper aims to fill this gap by constructing a smart facility management (SFM) framework. Following a comprehensive literature review on emerging ICTs and FM services, we put forward the definition and values of Smart FM, assess the technology readiness of emerging ICTs and systematically identify a number of technically supported FM services. The research is helpful to build a technically supported service system for next generation of facility management featuring information interoperability, resource sharing, and capacity coordination.