Building Management
Managing Buildings for People, Not Assumptions
By Peter Jones, Managing Director, Workplace Management EMEA, JLL.
Every heatwave presents facilities managers with the same challenge: keeping buildings comfortable while managing rising energy costs and supporting wider sustainability goals. As temperatures climb, cooling systems end up working harder, energy demand increases and maintaining the right environment for employees through effective asset management strategies, maintenance and investment becomes even more critical.
The recent record heatwave, which affected organisations across Western Europe, has highlighted a challenge that goes far beyond temperature control.
For many
organisations, the real issue is not how to cool a building more efficiently, but whether they truly understand how that building is being used in the first place.
Refining The Daily Office Experience
The way people use offices has drastically changed over the past few years, especially after the pandemic. Hybrid working has not evolved in the same way across Europe. Different markets, sectors and organisations continue to adopt different workplace models, making occupancy even less predictable. One day a floor may be full, the next it may be half empty. Collaboration spaces can be busy for a few hours before sitting largely unused for the rest of the day, while quieter areas experience the opposite. Attendance also varies throughout the week, making it increasingly difficult to rely on traditional operating schedules.
For facilities managers, that creates a new balancing act. Buildings still need to provide a consistent experience for employees, but doing so efficiently requires a much clearer understanding of where people are, when they are using different spaces and how those patterns change over time.
24 fmuk This need for precision
Grounding Daily Operations In Data is why corporate real
estate
leaders globally now rank occupancy data accuracy as their second-highest priority. That focus on better data reflects a broader shift in workplace strategy. JLL’s latest Future of Work Survey found that organisations increasingly expect corporate real estate to deliver measurable improvements in productivity, innovation and energy efficiency, making reliable occupancy data more important than ever. JLL’s Global Occupancy Planning Benchmark Report 2026 – drawing from 84 organisations representing 716 million square feet globally saw portfolio optimisation as the top corporate real estate objective for the third consecutive year, cited by 71% of respondents in 2026. But the most telling shift lies one rank lower: improving space data accuracy has moved to #2. This meaningful shift signals that organizations believe effective real estate strategy begins with trustworthy data.
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