The Biggest Challenges Facing Facilities Managers Today

Facilities Managers keep buildings safe, compliant and working, and the job has rarely been harder. The scope has widened from maintenance and services into carbon, workplace strategy, technology and risk, while budgets and teams have not grown at the same rate. Employers increasingly expect Facilities Managers to optimise building performance, cut emissions, improve employee experience and give senior leaders timely data, not simply keep the lights on.

These are the pressures we hear about most, both from the Facilities Managers we speak to and from the organisations that hire them, with the responses we see working.

1. Compliance and building safety

Compliance remains the core of the role and the part with the most serious consequences. HSE figures show that 126 workers were killed in work-related accidents in Great Britain in 2025/26, and that workplace injuries and ill health from current working conditions cost an estimated £22.9 billion in 2023/24.

The building safety regime has added another layer. Higher-risk buildings (at least 18 metres or seven storeys with at least two residential units, or hospitals and care homes) now come under the Building Safety Regulator, and remediation of unsafe cladding is far from finished: only 39% of monitored buildings with unsafe cladding had completed remediation by the end of July 2026. Organisations managing high-rise residential and mixed-use buildings have had to introduce enhanced fire risk assessments, digital compliance records and stricter contractor oversight, and commercial landlords have invested heavily in digital systems to track safety obligations across large portfolios. For FM teams in residential, healthcare and mixed-use estates, the documentation and competence requirements are a significant workload.

Common responses include:

• compliance platforms integrated with CAFM systems;
• digital audit trails for every statutory check; and
• continuous compliance monitoring in place of periodic inspections.

2. Cost pressure

JLL found that 84% of FM leaders worldwide name escalating operating costs and budget constraints as their top concern. Energy, labour and contract costs have all risen, while organisations expect facilities budgets to hold or fall. The National Living Wage for workers aged 21 and over rose to £12.71 an hour from April 2026, which feeds straight into cleaning, security and catering contracts.

The challenge is not only finding savings. It is protecting service quality and compliance while doing it, and explaining the trade-offs clearly to finance. In large retail estates, for example, supermarket chains rely on FM teams to cut energy costs at scale through lighting controls, refrigeration efficiency and building management systems. Other responses include:

• analytics, including AI tools, to forecast energy use and maintenance costs;
• predictive maintenance to reduce reactive spend; and
• performance-based supplier contracts.

3. Ageing buildings and maintenance backlogs

Many estates are older than the systems now expected of them. In the public sector the scale is well documented: the estimated cost to eradicate backlog maintenance across the NHS estate in England reached £15.9 billion in 2024/25, and the Department for Education estimated the condition need of the school estate in England at £11.4 billion. Facilities Managers in these estates spend much of their time ranking risks against budgets that cannot cover everything.

4. Sustainability and the retrofit challenge

The UK Green Building Council estimates that 19% of the UK's carbon footprint comes from the energy used to heat, cool and power buildings. Net zero targets mean decarbonising existing buildings, many of them old and inefficient, and organisations with net zero commitments increasingly look to FM to deliver them, often without dedicated capital. Balancing carbon reduction against cost and operational risk is now a routine part of the job.

In the private sector, British Land has introduced smart energy systems across assets such as Broadgate in London, using real-time data to reduce emissions, with facilities teams running those systems and reporting ESG performance. In the public sector, universities such as the University of Manchester are investing in estate-wide carbon reduction programmes, with FM teams leading retrofit and energy optimisation projects.

We recruited a Head of Sustainability and a Head of Building Services for the University of London, whose estate is committed to zero operational carbon.

Approaches that work include:

• data-driven retrofit that targets the worst-performing assets first;
• IoT sensors to monitor and adjust energy use in real time; and
• carbon budgeting built into FM decision-making.

5. Hybrid working and changing occupancy

Offices are used differently now. The British Council for Offices reports that Tuesday to Thursday occupancy averages 40% in UK offices, compared with 30% across all weekdays. That creates busy mid-week peaks and quiet Mondays and Fridays, which complicates space planning, cleaning schedules, catering and energy management. Facilities Managers have to design services for a building that is half empty one day and full the next.

Many organisations have redesigned offices around hybrid working, adding flexible workspace and collaboration zones. High street banks are a clear example, having reduced office footprints while reworking key sites for flexible working.

Practical tactics include:

• occupancy analytics to align services with actual use;
• on-demand workplace services; and
• treating office space as a flexible resource rather than a fixed asset.

6. Managing outsourced services

Cleaning, security, maintenance and catering are commonly delivered by contractors. Managing them well takes clear specifications, regular performance reviews, robust safety oversight and a good working relationship. When a contractor underperforms, it is the Facilities Manager who answers to building users, even though someone else delivers the service.

7. Technology, data and cyber risk

Buildings now rely on connected systems for heating, access, lighting, security, occupancy and air quality monitoring. That brings better data, but also integration problems and new risks, and FM teams have to interpret and act on the data as it arrives. The Government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025 found that 43% of UK businesses experienced a breach or attack in the previous 12 months. Building systems are part of that attack surface, and FM teams increasingly need to agree with IT how they are secured.

The teams handling this best tend to:

• move towards integrated building platforms;
• use digital twins for real-time modelling where the estate justifies it; and
• focus on making systems work together, not just on buying new ones.

8. Recruiting and keeping good people

All of this depends on capable teams, and they are hard to find. In SFG20's 2026 survey, 51% of organisations reported a shortage of FM staff. Experienced engineers and supervisors are in particular demand, the mix of technical, digital and sustainability skills the role now needs is scarce, and Facilities Managers often end up covering the gaps themselves.

Major service providers have responded with internal training academies focused on digital skills, ESG and smart building technology. Other responses include continuing professional development in data, ESG and building technology, multi-disciplinary FM teams, and partnering with technology providers to fill capability gaps.

What helps

The Facilities Managers who handle these pressures best tend to share a few habits:

• they keep a clear, risk-ranked view of compliance and maintenance;
• they translate building issues into cost and risk language for senior leaders;
• they invest in contractor relationships before problems arise; and
• they build teams with complementary skills rather than trying to cover everything themselves.

Facilities Managers now sit at the centre of sustainability and ESG delivery, digital change and smart buildings, workplace experience and hybrid working, and operational resilience. The organisations that do best use data well, invest in their people's skills and treat FM as a core strategic function rather than a cost line.

For employers, the lesson is that the Facilities Manager role has grown. Job descriptions written five years ago often understate it, and salaries set against an old brief can make good candidates hard to attract.

Talk to Maxwell Stephens

If you are hiring a Facilities Manager and want to understand what the market expects of the role today, talk to our team. If you are a Facilities Manager weighing up your next move, the Facilities Management jobs we are handling span the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.