After ten weeks, countless flights and hotel rooms, far too many bacon and eggs breakfasts, and a couple of unexpected side trips, I have made it to the end of Fall Conference season 2025. Every conference season is unique, and I wanted to take this opportunity to share many of the themes/topics that I have seen/heard while manning trade show booths, giving presentations or attending sessions. Some of these align with things that we have been talking about for a while, so we will revisit them. Others are outside of the realm of asset management, but we will discuss them as well since many of you are facing those same challenges.
So, here are the top themes/issues that I heard during Fall 2025 conference season:
- The Potential Impacts and Use Cases for AI in Facilities and Asset Management
- The Challenge of Recruiting and Retaining Talent
- Increasing Apathy From Senior Executives to Talking About “Deferred Maintenance”
- Navigating the Challenge of Doing More (or the same) with Less
- FCAs Presentations Have Jumped the Shark
- Integration of Capital and Maintenance Planning
- Cooperative Procurement is for Services Too
Over the next seven posts, I will dive deeper into each topic. I will be sharing the things that I have heard at the conferences, highlight some of the ways that organizations are tackling the issue and provide my own thoughts and insights (I hope!) on each topic.
For anyone else out there that has been on the conference circuit, if you have other topics that you have heard over and over again, please let me know and I will add them to the list.
See you next week with our first deeper dive into the impacts of AI in Facilities and Asset Management.
