Industry
In facility management, the customer judges the first response to a request, while the company pays for the missing equipment history
The AI Business Center Foundation (AIBC) is a think tank and advisory partner that helps the boards of construction, industrial and technical-services companies adopt artificial intelligence so that it delivers measurable results and builds competitive advantage. In facility management we start with the flow of service requests and the history of the building.
A fault is no longer a technical event. It has become a test of customer service
Facility management companies and the building maintenance departments of industrial plants handle hundreds of service requests, from minor faults to failures of critical equipment. The customer judges the time to the first response and whether the problem comes back. The company pays for every technician visit made without the equipment history, and for every owner report assembled by hand from several sources.
How cost and risk arise
- requests arriving by email, by phone and through the system, each described differently,
- equipment history scattered across the system, inspection records and email,
- recurring failures that nobody traces to a single cause,
- the report for the building owner prepared by hand every month,
- an AI assistant for building users launched without described rules and without informing users that it is an AI assistant.
The first step
The request flow for one building: a vocabulary of categories and urgency levels, assignment rules, first response, closure and history. We measure response and fix times and the number of repeat requests, and then specify a pilot.
What the Foundation does
- 30-day readiness assessment: a map of requests, data and roles, pilot specification.
- Semantic transformation, that is, organising a company’s names, processes and data so that people, language models and board reports understand them the same way: a vocabulary of building, equipment and requests shared by dispatchers, technicians and the customer.
- AI Act and ESG compliance: transparency of AI assistants towards building users, and data for environmental reporting.
- AI value report for the board: response time, repeat requests, maintenance cost.
Frequently asked questions
Can an AI assistant take service requests from building users?
It can, provided the request process, the categories and the urgency rules are described, and a person takes over unusual cases. Under Art. 50(1) of the AI Act, users must be informed at first contact that they are dealing with an AI assistant, unless this is obvious from the circumstances.
Is a new facility management system needed?
Usually not at the outset. The problem is often not the system but the fact that the history of equipment and requests is scattered across the system, email and documents. We first organise the vocabulary of the building, its equipment and its requests.
What does the building owner gain from this?
A consistent report: response and fix times, recurring failures, maintenance cost broken down by equipment and zone. It is an argument when the contract comes up for renewal and in the discussion of a modernisation budget.
Let’s start with an assessment
Let’s talk about one building where the request flow is worth organising.