Facilities Unfiltered - The Built Reality

What does “best practice” facility management actually look like—and why does it rarely match reality? In this podcast, Josh Lowe and Nic Guedenet tackle the gap between the FM lifecycle as it’s taught in textbooks and how it actually plays out on the ground.Join us for candid discussions about how emerging technologies and smarter practices can help bridge the gap between FM theory and FM reality—before it’s too late.

Facilities Unfiltered - The Built Reality is a technology podcast hosted by AkitaBox, with 27 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

AkitaBox hosts Facilities Unfiltered - The Built Reality, a technology show with 27 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #28

  The Evolution of FM Software | Facilities Unfiltered | Episode 28

  Aug 18, 202628 min

  FM software has been around a lot longer than most of us think—nearly 60 years—starting with preventive maintenance schedules on mainframes and punch cards. In this episode, Josh and Nic trace the surprising evolution from early CMMS roots through CAFM, EAM, and IWMS, and into today’s world of BIM, digital twins, IoT, and AI. Along the way, they unpack why the industry’s “alphabet soup” can be both genuinely useful and, at times, pure marketing noise—and why many tools still feel like work-order spreadsheets with extras bolted on. They dig into why CMMS implementations so often stall out (people/process, change management, and unrealistic expectations like “inventory management will just happen”), how bad asset records create PM backlogs and misleading performance metrics, and why a visual, contextual source of truth can change the game. If you’re wrestling with software fatigue, debating best-in-class integrations vs. “all-in-one,” or wondering what AI will actually do with messy facilities data, this conversation will hit home. Chapters (00:00:07) - Facilities Unfiltered: How Long Has FM Software Been Around (00:08:17) - Work Order Management: Overlooking the Issues (00:12:13) - Inventory Management Systems (00:16:40) - Familiar Issues with CMMS (00:22:34) - Rallying Around Data-driven Facilities

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  Episode #27

  Give Your Building a Physical: FCAs as Preventive Care | Facilities Unfiltered | Episode 27

  Aug 11, 202622 min

  Facility Condition Assessments (FCAs) can be the difference between clear, fact-based capital planning—and endless “political harangues” over who gets what. In Episode 27, Josh and Nic sit down with architect and FCA/PCA specialist Kyle Christiansen (and fellow ASTM committee member) to unpack what actually makes an assessment reliable, defensible, and technically accurate—and when it makes sense to keep FCA work in-house versus bringing in outside experts. They dig into the unglamorous but mission-critical side of the work: data hygiene. Kyle explains why portfolios get buried in duplication errors, mismatched inventories, and “assessor’s best guess” assumptions—and why the future looks a lot more like a “living FCA,” supported by dedicated data ownership, smarter document transfer, and real interviews with the people who know the building history. Along the way, the conversation tackles consistency across assessors, the role of pilot projects before scaling to hundreds of buildings, and how emerging standards can help owners compare scope, pricing, and deliverables without being misled by apples-to-oranges proposals—all through a memorable “buildings as healthcare” analogy that reframes how to think about preventative maintenance and long-term risk. Chapters (00:00:23) - Facility Condition Insights with Kyle Christiansen (00:01:22) - In-House vs Outsourcing: Capital Planning (00:03:55) - Facility and Data Management (00:10:27) - MR: Prepping the Client for Standards (00:18:45) - Healthcare in the Nursing Home (00:21:19) - Building Safety in the Healthcare Industry

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  Episode #26

  The Scope Conversation That Makes or Breaks Your FCA | Facilities Unfiltered | Episode 26

  Aug 4, 202629 min

  Why do so many Facility Condition Assessments (FCAs) miss the mark—before anyone even steps on site? In Episode 26 of Facilities Unfiltered, Josh and Nic sit down with Shay Rankhorn (Partner at Facility Diagnostics, former healthcare facilities leader, and 2022 ASHE President) to unpack the most common failure point: unclear expectations. The conversation starts where great FCAs actually begin—asking “What are you trying to do with the information?”—and follows the ripple effects that show up later as mismatched deliverables, wildly different bids, and owners forced to hire a second firm to get what they thought they were buying. From writing better RFPs (and using RFIs and shared Q&A to get true apples-to-apples comparisons) to navigating budget realities without gutting the outcome, Shay breaks down the practical choices that shape results: Uniformat vs. internal naming structures, PCA vs. FCA vs. partial scopes, and the critical decision between a static PDF “snapshot” and a dynamic, software-driven tool that stays live and supports real what-if planning. Along the way, the team gets real about why organizations keep rolling the dice until something breaks—and how better data, FCI-based storytelling, and risk framing can finally move facilities from “boy who cried wolf” to trusted advisor in the boardroom. Chapters (00:00:00) - The #1 reason facility condition assessments fail (00:01:04) - Questions for Facility Condition Assessment FCA (00:05:02) - The FCA RFP (00:13:01) - PCA vs FCA: What's the Difference? (00:18:56) - Facilities Financing: The Risk of Infrastructure (00:23:47) - Do Facilities Nightmares Get More Attention Than Business Nightmares? (00:25:04) - Getting Your First FCA (00:27:20) - What is the Worst Disconnect You've Seen?

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  Episode #25

  25th Episode Built Reality Throwback | Facilities Unfiltered | Episode 25

  Jul 28, 202614 min

  In celebration of our 25th episode, we're going back to one of our most popular episodes "The Value Engineering Hangover." We'll be back with a new episode next week! Chapters (00:00:00) - The VE Hangover (00:00:33) - Facilities Unfiltered (00:01:27) - Facility Management: The Need for Value Engineering (00:10:53) - The Value of a Design Specs (00:13:40) - A Moment of Silence

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  Episode #24

  Why Facility Data Needs Plain Language | Facilities Unfiltered | Episode 24

  Jul 21, 202626 min

  Facilities teams often lose budget battles because the message is too complicated. In Episode 24 of Facilities Unfiltered, Josh and Nic make the case for keeping facility condition assessments and capital planning “first-grade simple,” especially when the audience is a board, a CFO, or the general public who just wants to know: What’s broken, what’s at risk, and what do we need to fund? They unpack how deep classification standards (Uniformat, CSI, D-levels) and overly technical language can create misclassification, long training ramps, and reports that aren’t truly usable—then explore how AI can flip the script by handling the filing, translating complexity into plain language, and helping stakeholders ask better questions without wading through 300-page documents. Along the way, they touch on why system identification matters more than perfect labels, how prioritization and risk scoring can be communicated without a seminar, and why metrics like FCI vs. “facility condition score” (FCS) are a step toward clarity and trust. Chapters (00:08:32) - On the Classification of Facility Data (00:16:34) - Keep it First-Grade (00:23:08) - On the Future of Auto Classification

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