In the ever-changing built environment, the role of facilities managers goes beyond maintaining physical infrastructure. They’re now key agents in creating environments that promote the health, well-being and productivity of building occupants. From air quality and lighting to mental health considerations and sustainability, the scope of their responsibilities continues expanding.
To explore this shift, Whitney Austin Gray, PhD, LEED AP, senior vice president of research at the International WELL Building Institute, will present the session “If Buildings Could Talk: Investing in Health for Facility Managers” at NFMT 2025 in Baltimore from March 25 to 27.
FacilitiesNet: Facilities management now requires a 360-degree approach to building performance. What are the key challenges professionals face when balancing environmental sustainability with the well-being of building occupants, and how are they overcoming these challenges?
Whitney Austin Gray: Indeed, facilities management today is expected to address building performance in a 360-degree approach that balances environmental sustainability with occupant well-being. Key challenges include optimizing energy efficiency while maintaining indoor air quality, ensuring water conservation without compromising hygiene and integrating smart technologies that enhance both sustainability and comfort.
What makes facilities management even more challenging is the constantly evolving workplace environment that shapes evolving patterns of occupant behaviors, which in turn also contribute to the evolving expectations for occupant satisfaction. In short, change has become constant when it comes to demands for delivering occupant satisfaction.
In the next era of work, due to flexible work models including remote and/or hybrid, building occupancy rates are expected to stay around 50 percent of the pre-pandemic level. This creates a new challenge for facility management. Many facility managers have not been formally trained on these new flex models which allow people to come in early, stay late, work at odd hours and use different spaces. With the increasing demand for return to office both in the public and private sectors, there can be high moments of friction when people re-adapt to work environments which may not be supportive of their needs. This can lead to an increased occupant satisfaction curve where facility managers may be asked to accommodate these new models of work.
To overcome the challenges and balance between environmental sustainability and occupant health challenges, facilities managers are leveraging data-driven building systems, adopting WELL and LEED standards, and using AI-powered solutions to fine-tune operations in real time. However, the constant evolution of work environments challenges facilities managers to constantly adapt strategies.
FN: How can facilities managers leverage technology and data to improve space utilization and align it with the intended design purpose? What tools or strategies are proving most effective in translating data into actionable insights?
Austin Gray: Building technology and data have become a powerful tool to assist facility managers to make good decisions to balance environmental sustainability goals and occupant well-being demands. You can’t fix things that you don’t know. The good news is that data is making the invisible visible.
However, automated building monitoring systems such as lighting and air quality controls rely on efficiency outputs based on the model. Oftentimes, manual overrides that determine shading protocol and air quality monitoring levels lead to underperformance such as lighting and indoor air quality. Many industry players are working toward more effective solutions targeting to minimize compromised performance by static IEQ systems when manual overrides interfere.
Some strategies facility managers can leverage are in stakeholder engagement and communications. For example, a WELL Certified building is required to conduct an occupant satisfaction survey. Learnings from such surveys are powerful data to help inform how to get buildings to perform better for occupant health.
We think there is a big space where facility managers can leverage building data as well as design and operational strategies to communicate with occupants and proactively engage occupants for better built environments.
FN: With the evolving role of facilities managers as "doctors of buildings,” what innovations or practices are you seeing that prioritize occupant health, satisfaction and well-being?
Austin Gray: Any of these ongoing or new challenges generating high points of friction for facility managers are also opportunities to train and elevate building facility managers for improved delivery of services. Increasingly, facility managers are expected to be the “doctors of buildings” in that their jobs do not just depend on their IQ of running buildings, but their EQ of how to manage people and occupant behaviors. Many facility experts will benefit from much if they adapt and acquire skills to better manage occupant behaviors. That entails constant stakeholder engagement and effective communications and necessary tools to do so.
At the crux of engineering of building performance modeling systems is how to balance static settings and constant variables based on occupants’ individualized needs. Can facility managers predict occupancy rates and use of space in a way that all factors are considered and properly managed? Many of these variables rely on the constants’ behaviors, which are shifting radically as we move to the next era of work.
For example, some models anticipate a 45-year-old white male with certain thermal comfort needs and that they are mainly staying in one workstation throughout the day. But today, many workplaces adopt flexible space for workers and there is a wide diversity of workers with different thermal comfort set points. Facility managers are expected to provide varied levels of thermal comfort while managing energy efficiency. Facility managers with knowledge of strategies in the WELL Building Standard will be better informed to come up with solutions to make more occupants happy about their space. In this case, Facility managers can address the challenge by designating zoned workspaces, providing individual access to thermal control and other strategies such as providing point-of-use heaters/fans and warming blankets.
FN: Smart technologies are crucial for energy efficiency and water preservation. Can you share examples of how these technologies are being integrated into facilities management to meet both environmental and human-centered goals?
Austin Gray: There are more than 500 strategies in the WELL Building Standard that are all designed to make our places healthier, happier, more productive while complementing environmentally sustainable objectives.
The example above about the default setting assuming office environments being dominated by 45-year-old white males with certain thermal comfort needs can be an easy example of how to balance both sustainability and health goals. By studying the occupancy pattern, workforce demographics and their health needs, facility managers can adjust the way they leverage smart building technologies to deliver a satisfying experience for more people. Maybe that requires reversing the thermal comfort setting for the new majority of occupant needs. Maybe the lighting automation is adjusted for the new patterns of flexible work hours.
Building technologies are also increasingly applied to models leaning into neuro diversity. In the more and more diverse workplaces, one size definitely does not fit all. Smart building technologies can help us to make our places more inclusive and comfortable for all. Google Experience Institute is a great example of accommodating meeting spaces based on lighting, comfort, location, art and other amenities to address that many people do not operate on virtual platforms and office spaces in the same way.
To learn more about how facilities managers can champion wellness initiatives, be sure to check out Austin Gray’s session at NFMT 2025 in Baltimore. Register for NFMT here.
Jeff Wardon, Jr., is the assistant editor for the facilities market.
