We asked Luís Martins, CTO and co-founder at Infraspeak, what technological trends he foresees shaping collaboration in facilities management over the next few years.

“When I think about how technology can support collaborative environments, the first thing that comes to my mind is Large Language Models (LLMs), which now can categorise information very quickly and accurately, and so data classification has become a lot easier.

For example, when a document is provided to an AI-based model, the latter can identify whether it is an invoice, a budget proposal, or a discussion report. This is particularly relevant when two entities need to work together since each company has its own internal structure for organising documents, processes, and teams.

Traditionally, this required manual mapping to ensure that one company’s budget corresponded to another’s “order” concept or that a critical document for one was recognised as a supplier validation for the other. With AI support, this intermediation is much more efficient, reduces administrative work, and boosts system connectivity.

Luís Martins and Eddie, Infraspeak’s Barking Executive

But even more importantly — and this is where the game really changes — LLMs have the ability to read and interpret data from manuals or technical documents, for example. In the context of a facilities management/maintenance operation, this translates into the LLMs’ capacity of, facing a problem or malfunction in a given asset, going through the manual and easily pointing out the root cause or what needs to be done to solve it.

Beyond AI’s impact, a significant shift is also occurring in digital product development.

Software is no longer just a closed, isolated solution but is evolving into open and flexible platforms. It is increasingly common for these to be designed to operate within an integrated ecosystem and connect various areas. More evidently, there’s been a concern with collaboration between tech/teams/end users, which is shifting the way products are ideated, following now a people-centred approach.

For one of Infraspeak’s clients, Caps Group, [British market leader in the furniture, installation, and fit-out solutions sector for retail and hospitality] using Infraspeak Network™, and connecting their vast network of suppliers in a shared workspace, improved the way they managed these relationships and processes. Real-time data sharing made communication more agile and eliminated errors, proving to be a true win for all parties involved — in fact, around 50% of their suppliers became adopters of Infraspeak Network™ too.

We are witnessing a dynamic flow of information that tackles the formation of organisational silos, where different teams used to operate in isolation.

With greater fluidity in data exchange between parties, I’m confident we can all achieve a much more advanced level of collaboration, ensuring greater operational efficiency and promoting a unified approach to facilities management businesses.”