Impact of Emerging Technologies on Facility Services - A Mixed-Methodic Approach on Smart Building Technologies

Abstract

The Facility Service (FS) industry is the third largest sector in the EU. In Europe, as well as in the US, around 10% of all employees work in this sector. Macro economic studies estimate that in general 47% of all jobs will be automated due to digitalization. FS will be highly affected by the megatrend digitalization as numerous routine tasks are performed in this sector. However, current studies only provide a macroeconomic view on the changes. Therefore, this paper aims to answer the following research questions: Which smart building technologies are relevant for FS? Which are already in use and which services will be affected? The basis for the current research was a qualitative prestudy. Fifty German speaking Facility Managers were asked about the technical and economic feasibility of smart building technologies in the FS sector. Based on the smart building technologies identified as relevant, the authors carried out a quantitative literature review. This analysis did not only include publications about the usage of smart building technologies in the FS industry, but also considered use cases on the technologies identified by the pre-study in other industries. In total, more than 350 cases were analyzed. Based on that literature review, a research database was set up to explore the relevant technologies and the affected services in detail. The next research step was to compare the results of scientific publication with those of commercial studies and the results of the pre-study. Thus, this paper outlines the relevant technologies and FS. It further presents the detailed results of the validation process.