Bushfires, floods, heatwaves, pandemics and energy instability. Australia has faced them all in rapid succession. In every one of these events, Facilities Management (FM) teams have played a critical but largely unseen role in keeping buildings safe, compliant and operational.
When disruption hits, business continuity doesn’t start with strategy decks or IT systems. It starts with the building.
Australia’s climate places unique pressure on the built environment. Infrastructure Australia and national climate agencies continue to highlight an increase in extreme heat events, flooding and weather volatility across the country.
More than 10 million Australians live in areas at high risk of extreme heat, placing sustained demand on HVAC, electrical and cooling infrastructure. These conditions regularly push building assets beyond their original design parameters.
For FM teams, this often means:
Assets don’t fail randomly in these conditions. They fail where resilience has been compromised.
Crises expose the limits of deferred and reactive maintenance. Assets maintained to minimum standards are often the first to fail when conditions deteriorate.
Industry insights from the Facility Management Association of Australia (FMA) consistently show that organisations with strong planned and condition-based maintenance programs experience fewer critical failures during disruptions. Reactive maintenance may work in stable conditions, but it provides little protection when demand spikes and response time is critical.
In a crisis, “good enough” rarely is.
Australian regulatory obligations don’t stop during emergencies. Fire systems, emergency power, lifts and essential services must remain compliant, often under heightened scrutiny from regulators, insurers and auditors.
Facilities Management sits at the intersection of:
When systems fail, the consequences are not just operational. They quickly become legal, financial and reputational.
At the same time, the FM sector is facing ongoing workforce pressure. Infrastructure Australia and industry bodies continue to report significant skills shortages across trades, technicians and engineering roles, with projected gaps in the tens of thousands across the built environment.
Crises amplify this challenge. When contractor access is limited and response times matter, the experience and judgement of in-house FM professionals become invaluable. Technology can support decision-making, but it cannot replace experience when systems are under stress.
Recent events have accelerated a long-overdue shift in how Facilities Management is viewed across Australian organisations.
FM is no longer just about keeping the lights on. It plays a direct role in:
Organisations that embedded FM into crisis planning, rather than treating it as a purely operational function, were better positioned to respond and recover.
In Australia, the next disruption is not a question of if, but when. Leading FM teams are already:
Resilience is built long before a crisis begins.
Facilities Management is often invisible when everything is running smoothly, and highly visible when it isn’t. Australia’s recent experiences have made one thing clear: resilient organisations rely on resilient buildings, and resilient buildings rely on strong FM teams.
As we plan for an increasingly unpredictable future, Facilities Management must be recognised not just as a support function, but as a cornerstone of business continuity, risk management and long-term resilience.
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