FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
By Rob Gilbert, Managing Director – Commercial & Infrastructure, Totalmobile
2025 has been a year of fast change, and most organisations across the commercial and infrastructure sectors are now well into their digitisation journey. But 2026 won’t be about adding more tech. It’ll be about making sense of the data we already have — and using it properly.
- The rise of the Chief Data Officer
The biggest shift we’ll see in 2026 is the increasing presence of the Chief Data Officer and their growing influence in operational decisions.
It’s no longer just about IT integration or security. The question now is: how is data captured, how does it flow, where is it stored, and how is it used?
Digitisation isn’t new anymore. The focus now is on how organisations leverage the data it produces. For any vendor, being able to explain their data strategy — where it sits, how it’s managed, and what value it creates — will be as important as the software itself.
- AI as an enabler, not a replacement
AI will keep evolving, but I don’t see it replacing back-office teams or field planners.
The next year will be about AI as a support layer — enabling better decision-making, improving compliance, and enhancing quality in the field.
For field workers, it’ll be about guidance: ensuring safe working, best practice, and consistent standards. For office teams, it’s about contract and data interrogation — helping leaders make good decisions, faster, with evidence behind them.
That’s where the real opportunity lies: AI as the safety net and accelerator, not the replacement.
- Economic pressure and the productivity puzzle
We’re operating in a tough economic backdrop. Labour remains tight. Skilled and semi-skilled roles are harder to fill, and wages are rising, particularly in the utilities and energy sectors.
Profit motive is still the universal driver. Everyone wants to grow market share and maximise margin, but it’s getting harder to do that when resources are stretched and expectations are high.
Governments aren’t making life easier either — policies that increase employment costs or restrict flexibility are pushing more organisations to turn to digital tools. It’s no longer cheaper or quicker to “just hire more people”.
The challenge for 2026 will be about doing more with the same workforce — and that means getting serious about productivity and how it’s measured. Productivity per head is falling across the UK and Western Europe. The answer sits in the data. If you can understand productivity at both macro and micro level, you can start to influence it. But you can only do that with reliable data in one place.
- M&A: consolidation gathers pace
We’ll start to see more M&A activity next year. There’s a growing patchwork of smaller, niche vendors in the commercial and Infrastructure sectors, each solving very specific problems. Many of them reach around £2m in revenue quickly but then struggle to scale.
Larger vendors will see these as opportunities to fill gaps in their stack. For the smaller businesses, acquisition might be the easiest route to monetise their work. For customers, it will mean fewer suppliers — a trend we’re already seeing, as organisations look to consolidate vendors rather than add more complexity.
- The quiet transformation continues in 2026
A lot of the change happening won’t be flashy or public. You won’t see it in press releases.
It’s a quiet transformation — the kind that shows up in fewer road closures, faster reinstatement, or smoother airport experiences. The public might not notice overnight, but the organisations behind them will: higher customer satisfaction, better profit margins, and fewer wasted working hours.
For most of us, that’s what progress really looks like.
- Advice for 2026
Be relentless in the pursuit of spreadsheets!
If you’re still running core processes off spreadsheets, you’re creating blind spots. You can’t scale them, you can’t govern them, and you can’t see cause and effect. Every spreadsheet hides risk and fragments your data.
Pull your information into as few systems as possible, in the most usable format possible. That’s where readiness, insight, and competitive advantage begin.
2026 is not about big promises or five-year roadmaps anymore. It’s about making good, measurable decisions — consistently, and in one place.
