Sustainable Facilities Management of Housing Properties in Sweden: Current Challenges and Future Solutions

Paper in proceeding, 2022

Despite the potential to contribute to sustainable development, facilities management (FM) work is complex and lacks clear direction, practices, and solutions in relation to sustainability. In response, current and future challenges within FM of housing in Sweden is investigated to understand what possible solutions and practices will be important moving forward. Building on FM research, the findings show how social sustainability is an important focus area. Issues such as unemployment and criminal activity are especially difficult to handle as this requires collaboration with other actors like law enforcement and social services. Increasing the use of digitalisation and AI in different properties is seen as useful solutions to increase sustainability, but it is difficult to know what efforts to prioritize and how much value it contributes. The findings contribute insight into the ongoing development of sustainable FM practices, and identifies possible solutions that may facilitate the transition towards more sustainable FM. Such insights are important not only for building wiser, but also for maintaining what we have already built in a wise way.