By Austin Piazza
From the June 2025 Issue of Facility Executive
Given their sheer scope of responsibilities, building and facilities managers can’t be expected to do everything themselves. Certain maintenance, repair, or capital improvement projects must be delegated, especially when highly specialized expertise is required. For these projects, facilities managers often enlist commercial contractors, including skilled tradespeople from the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC spaces.
It goes without saying that not all skilled trade contractors are created equal — major differentiators can include years of experience, level of certification, flexibility of scheduling, and pricing. Another factor that facilities managers should never overlook is investment in best-in-class technology, a notable point of distinction for top-tier contractors.
Why is it important for facilities managers to find contractors who invest in robust tech stacks, including real-time data analysis? Simply put, the right tech helps to ensure that work is performed right the first time — minimizing disruptions to the facility, curbing expenses, and ensuring facilities managers maintain a reputation for keeping their building up and running smoothly.
How Advanced Tech Helps Prevent Mistakes
Having access to the right tech empowers any contractor to complete jobs quickly and effectively, enhancing first-time fix rates and lowering the mean time to repair (MTTR).
One of the main benefits of technology is that it ensures real-time access to knowledge. A technician who’s been called to the job site — whether to troubleshoot the building’s HVAC system or to identify the source of a hard-to-spot plumbing leak — can instantly complete a workflow that walks them through every step of the repair process. AI support can minimize time-to-diagnosis and ensure that the technician doesn’t miss a critical part of the process.
There are also different ways for a technician to access information. For instance, with a platform like XOi, a technician who comes across a unique component or unusual wiring setup can simply take a photo of it, then run an AI-powered search; a single image is all it takes to unlock an entire ecosystem of relevant data points, including manuals, OEM manuals, wiring diagrams, and more.
By following automated workflows, technicians can ultimately get the building up and running again quickly—and that’s not just a win for the contractor, but for the facilities manager who hired them.
What’s In It For Facilities Managers?
There are several ways facilities managers can benefit from hiring commercial technicians who prioritize robust technology:
- It reduces downtime. The primary goal of a facilities manager is to keep their building or campus fully usable at all times, minimizing any unplanned downtime and the resulting loss in productivity. Seeking tech-forward contractors helps achieve this goal, as it means problems can be diagnosed more quickly—and with greater initial accuracy.
- It limits operational disruption. When a plumber, electrician, or HVAC contractor can expediently identify where the problem lies and determine the most prudent way to fix it, without needing a lot of guesswork or second opinions, it reduces the amount of time key systems must be offline — meaning employees and customers are less inconvenienced by maintenance calls.
- It helps with preventative maintenance. Another benefit to advanced technology is that when a technician is dispatched to a particular job site, they can instantly access reports from previous service calls — including any preventative maintenance recommendations that may have been brought up by past technicians. This information can be helpful for showing facilities managers where it may be urgent to take proactive steps against asset or infrastructure breakdown.
- It ensures trust and transparency. Sourcing a skilled trade contractor who capitalizes on cutting-edge tech also means building managers know exactly who they can call for a given project, without needing to worry about having to micromanage — in fact, they can expect detailed documentation for everything that was done, perhaps even a brief video summary that can be shared with stakeholders who are geographically remote.
- Better understanding assets. Utilizing a contractor who is able to provide meaningful data regarding equipment is quickly becoming an industry standard. Easily identifying data points such as the age of equipment, refrigerant type, and heat type allows facility managers to better capital plan around the life expectancy of their equipment and meet ESG/energy efficiency goals.
The bottom line: Knowing how to hire the best contractors enables facilities managers to best serve their internal and external customers, and to convey their ability to attend to all the building’s needs—even when doing so by delegating to an expert.
How To Find Tech-Forward Contractors
When comparing different plumbers, electricians, or HVAC contractors, there are a few important questions that facilities managers can ask in order to ascertain the level of technological savvy.
A good place to start: What kind of technological upgrades or investments have you made over the past 18 to 24 months? In the skilled trades, field software is evolving at a significant pace, and it’s important to verify that contractors see some value in staying close to the cutting edge.
Another question worth asking: What’s in it for me? Contractors invest in technology when it helps them work more profitably and efficiently, but facilities managers deserve to know how it will help them do their jobs more efficiently—including how a contractor’s investment in tech can control costs, abbreviate timelines, and ensure greater transparency in documentation.
Asking good questions can help any facilities manager determine which contractor can best accommodate their needs, and the needs of their space — aided by advanced technologies that put meaningful data at their fingertips.
Piazza is Director of Sales for XOi Technologies. He is passionate about helping skilled trade enterprises serve their clients more effectively through robust data solutions.
Do you have a comment? Share your thoughts by sending an e-mail to the Editor at jen@groupc.com.