6 Major Challenges in Facilities Management in 2025: How Digital Twins Can Keep You Ahead
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In 2024, Dublin Airport announced an $1.8 billion modernization investment plan. As part of this initiative, with over 140 projects utilizing the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform, the airport is piloting Tandem—a Digital Twin platform to create a connected ecosystem for managing its assets, spaces, and systems.
Dublin is not the only airport adopting digital twins. Major airports like Vancouver YVR, Amsterdam Schiphol, and Singapore Changi are already using this technology to transform how they operate and manage their facilities.
Managing a complex venue like an airport—or any large facility—means juggling many things at once: keeping systems running, ensuring safety, and controlling facility management costs. Doing it all manually might get the job done, but it’s slow, inefficient, and prone to error.
However, digital twins are changing the game. These immersive digital replicas of physical spaces provide you with real-time data and insights into any facility. For facility managers, digital twins make it easy to handle even the most complex environments and tackle any challenges that come their way.
The 6 Biggest Challenges in Facilities Management (and How Digital Twins Solve Them)
Facility managers face increasing challenges such as unexpected equipment failures, downtime, safety concerns, fragmented building data, and high costs. Here's how digital twins can help you meet these challenges head-on.
1. Challenge: Unpredictable Equipment Failures
Sudden failures in critical systems like HVAC or security are not uncommon. For instance, incorrect building pressurization, underutilized energy-saving settings, and excessive ventilation are just some factors contributing to HVAC malfunctions. When these systems suddenly stop working, it can disrupt operations for hours or even days, leading to increased repair costs, hindered operations, and frustration for everyone involved.
How Digital Twins Help:
Predictive maintenance powered by digital twins can analyze performance data (such as age, usage, and history) to flag issues before they escalate. This means facility managers get early warnings, allowing them to schedule repairs at appropriate times, avoiding costly surprises. This not only keeps operations stable but also lowers costs and reduces downtime.
2. Challenge: Downtime Due to Maintenance Disruptions
Even routine maintenance can be disruptive, making it difficult for facility managers to schedule without impacting tenants, staff, or production. Without clear data on how systems are performing, these disruptions can drag on longer than expected, eating into your bottom line.
How Digital Twins Help:
By providing predictive insights, digital twins can show exactly when and where problems are likely to arise. This allows managers to strategically plan maintenance, scheduling work during periods of low occupancy or off-peak hours. For example, if a piece of equipment shows signs of wear and is expected to fail in a few months, repairs can be coordinated in advance to minimize downtime.
3. Challenge: Ensuring Safety and Emergency Preparedness
As a facility manager, you bear the heavy responsibility of ensuring safety and emergency preparedness in the face of evolving threats—whether natural disasters, fires, or security threats. This means you must develop and maintain comprehensive emergency and disaster management plans, keep staff trained, stay abreast of changing regulations, and adopt advanced safety technologies.
How Digital Twins Help:
Digital twins give managers real-time access to critical safety data, such as occupancy levels, temperature, air quality, and potential hazards. In an emergency, they can identify the safest evacuation routes and coordinate responses more effectively. These virtual models also support better emergency planning by simulating drills, keeping staff prepared for any situation.
Many people around the world have already recognized these applications.
The World Economic Forum gives an example:
“[A digital twin of an urban river and its surrounding building ring] will enable local authorities to simulate changes in water temperature, levels, and flow rates, thereby helping them better understand flood risks and develop the most appropriate response measures to ensure more efficient and sustainable water management.”
4. Challenge: Lack of Real-time Monitoring and Insights
Many facilities rely on isolated systems to monitor operations (such as HVAC, lighting, or security), but these systems rarely communicate with each other. Data scattered across different platforms makes it difficult to get a complete picture of overall performance or quickly address urgent issues.
How Digital Twins Help:
Digital twins integrate real-time data from sensors, building management systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices into a central platform. Facility managers can see everything they need in a single, easy-to-read interface. Real-time analytics also send instant alerts, allowing managers to react immediately if an HVAC system malfunctions or a door access alarm sounds.
5. Challenge: Incomplete or Fragmented Data
Accurate decision-making relies on reliable, complete information, but in many facilities, data exists in silos. Spreadsheets, outdated CAD files, and unconnected software platforms create gaps, leading to inconsistent records and communication breakdowns.
How Digital Twins Help:
Digital twins integrate data from Building Information Modeling (BIM) files and historical records into a single 3D record platform. By centralizing all information in one place, you can visualize facility layouts, track assets, and monitor performance more effectively. This streamlined setup enhances team collaboration and provides greater peace of mind during management transitions.
6. Challenge: High Operational Costs
Utilities, maintenance, and staffing can quickly drive up expenses, especially without a clear method for optimizing resource use. Small inefficiencies—like improper lighting placement or heating systems left on during downtime—can accumulate into huge costs over time.
How Digital Twins Help:
Digital twins can analyze resource usage and identify inefficiencies, helping you make more informed, data-driven decisions. They allow you to simulate various scenarios (such as reconfiguring layouts or adjusting cleaning schedules) to predict how changes will affect energy use or staffing. In turn, you can avoid guesswork and reduce waste, lowering costs and increasing return on investment (ROI).
Barriers to Digital Twin Adoption in Facilities Management
While the benefits of digital twins are clear, adopting this technology also faces challenges:
- Knowledge Gap: Many facility managers are not fully familiar with digital twins or how they can transform operations, hindering support from senior management for funding.
- Cost Concerns: Decision-makers often focus on the upfront costs of new technology, overlooking long-term savings. A clear ROI analysis helps drive investment.
- System Integration Difficulties: Many facilities rely on fragmented systems, and integrating digital twins with existing systems can feel overwhelming.
- Employee Resistance: Some employees worry that digital tools will replace their roles. Providing training and demonstrating how digital twins enhance rather than replace human work helps alleviate concerns.
Success Story: Central Lincoln People’s Utility District (PUD)
Central Lincoln People's Utility District (PUD) faced a significant challenge: upgrading its power transmission system across 45 facilities spanning 750 square miles without compromising schedule or budget. By partnering with Burns & McDonnell and utilizing Matterport’s digital twin technology, the utility achieved remarkable results: within four years, PUD reduced over 250 duplicate site visits, cut travel costs, and completed the entire project on time and within budget.
How Matterport Simplifies Facilities Management:
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With Matterport for Facilities Management, you gain highly accurate and detailed visibility into physical spaces, simplifying operations and planning for any challenges you might encounter.
Thanks to the Pro3 camera, the application of digital twin technology extends far beyond indoor spaces. It utilizes LiDAR technology to capture millions of precise measurements even outdoors, and can handle various environments from low light to direct sunlight. The Pro3 captures 3D data up to 100 meters away in 20 seconds per scan, speeding up scanning and giving you more time to focus on collaboration.
Combined with our advanced cloud processing platform, the digital twins provided by Pro3 are more accurate, detailed, and realistic than ever before.