This month in ES, you can read about a public school system in Massachusetts that is investing in its occupants and its new high school by doing something the majority of schools nationwide are not doing: providing proactive facility management using today's technology. I hope this is the beginning of a trend that will displace antiquated requirements for simply delivering O&M manuals to an owner at the end of a construction project. Building management needs to be the recipient of the right tools to do the right job on day one of owner occupancy.
Poor IAQ and hot and cold complaints, to mention just two issues, are chronic O&M problems that are historically associated with reactive facility management. Receipt of O&M manuals doesn't improve space comfort if the information within these documents, as well as other pertinent information, isn't transferred seamlessly into day-to-day building management agenda.