With the end of year quickly approaching, many facilities departments are searching for last-minute improvements and updates to make in the remaining time left, with the remaining maintenance budget they have on hand.
Faced with the ultimatum of “use it or lose it,” you may be looking for where to direct your leftover maintenance budget in these final few weeks of the year. To help simplify that decision, these four key areas offer the smoothest and fastest pathway for improving building performance, reliability, efficiency, and security:
- Building Automation System (BAS) updates
- Commissioning and finetuning
- Critical alarm system management
- Cybersecurity practices
Building Automation System (BAS) Updates: Modernize and Lower Maintenance Costs
Now’s the time to complete those needed BAS upgrades and replacements you’ve been putting off. BAS upgrades are a quick way to see immediate improvements in efficiencies and energy savings while also enhancing integration with HVAC, lighting, access control, security, and other interrelated building systems. Once your BAS has been updated, you’ll be ready for future technology adoptions, expansions, and retrofits in the year ahead.
Let’s start with energy savings. According to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, modernizing your BAS allows for smarter control of HVAC, lighting, and other systems, which can translate into a 10-30% reduction in energy consumption and significantly lower utility bills. What’s more, the Energy Star Playbook estimates that you can expect payback for BAS updates in under two years.
BAS modernization additionally streamlines maintenance tasks, enabling you to maximize existing resources with real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and automated controls. While reducing staff labor hours and related costs, modern BAS reduces downtime and costly repairs with the ability to catch and address maintenance issues early.
While delivering immediate benefits, BAS upgrades prepare you to take advantage of emerging innovations that drive building performance, efficiency, security, and occupant safety. The latest BAS offers compatibility with IoT devices and sustainable technologies, while setting the stage for future expansion. With BAS, you’ll be well positioned to adapt to changing regulatory requirements as well as evolving operational and business needs. An investment in BAS upgrades additionally increases property value as well as brand perception.
For next steps on implementing BAS updates, read our blog post here.
Commissioning and Finetuning: Preparing Your Building for the Year Ahead
Along with BAS upgrades, the end of the year is an ideal time to complete any final commissioning and finetuning to ensure all building systems — HVAC, lighting, access controls, electrical, and more — are designed and performing as intended.
Take these last few weeks to review and test systems to address inefficiencies or issues, determine any changes in space usage and occupant needs, and complete any needed recommissioning of spaces to meet evolving requirements. This will help you identify potential system issues and failures early, keep systems operating reliably, ensure assets remain in optimal condition, meet compliance and safety requirements, and reduce downtime.
As part of this process, review sequences to improve resource allocation, better coordinate staff and workflows, reduce bottlenecks, and streamline operations. Sequencing tasks can help you see every stage more clearly, and quickly adapt to evolving demands.
While you’re at it, make any necessary adjustments to control strategies, operating schedules, and system parameters to optimize efficiency and comfort. Check that dashboards and interfaces are updated and provide clear visibility of accurate real-time building data you can use to improve performance.
Managing Critical Alarms: Prioritizing Alarms and Preserving Resources
Excessive and unnecessary alarms are a significant drain on resources and time and can be particularly annoying around the holiday season when staff are hoping to enjoy more time with loved ones. And yet, an alarm management system that prioritizes the most critical alarms is key to making sure your building systems and network continue to operate without disruption.
As the end of the year approaches, now’s the time to put a critical alarm management system in place. Adopt a strategy that lets you identify and prioritize critical alarms that require rapid response and remediation, and ensure the right person is notified, with confirmation of notification. Have a plan that escalates the alarm if the alarm isn’t acknowledged and the appropriate response isn’t implemented in a timely fashion.
Your alarm management system should additionally provide you with historical and real-time data that allows you to track and monitor alarm trends so you can identify and address any patterns and issues. By putting your critical alarm management system in place now, you’ll see rapid improvements in efficiency and productivity, with fewer false alarms and better use of existing personnel resources. You’ll also realize increased uptime for building systems and operations with faster troubleshooting and remediation. And you’ll improve compliance with safety and service level requirements.
Learn more about Albireo Energy’s strategic approach to alarm system management with our Critical Alarm Messenger (CALM) solution here.
Cybersecurity: Close Your Security Gaps
According to State of CPS Security 2025: Building Management System Exposures, 75% of organizations’ BMS devices are vulnerable to cyber risks. And Honeywell reports that 71% of facilities managers are concerned about operational cybersecurity. The good news is, there are actions you can take before the end of the year to bolster your cybersecurity practices and protect your building systems, data, and occupants.
Invest a portion of your remaining budget to complete security audits to identify BMS vulnerabilities and close cybersecurity gaps. If you haven’t already, implement robust security methods like multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access controls to restrict unauthorized users and keep out malicious actors. Make sure you’ve updated your building control and automation systems with software patches and firmware updates, along with replacing outdated hardware. And deploy firewalls and other network security deterrence measures to monitor and filter incoming and outgoing network traffic and block threats.
One highly effective way to secure building systems from cyber threats is by moving operational technology (OT) systems off your IT network and onto their own secure cloud environment. Along with relieving your IT team of the burden of managing, updating, and securing OT, a private cloud environment allows for more robust cybersecurity and data protection for those systems.
A dedicated private cloud offers an isolated environment for OT, reducing the risk of unauthorized access and attacks from other tenants that share a public cloud. With a private cloud environment, you maintain full control over security policies, network configurations, and user access, for more customized and comprehensive protection for sensitive building automation and OT data.
Private clouds also allow for customized encryption protocols that add another layer of protection between your building systems and malicious actors. And because of the centralized nature of a private cloud, you’ll find it much easier and faster to implement security updates and the latest detection and deterrence methods. Read more about transitioning OT to a Private Cloud Service here.
Albireo Energy’s Private Cloud Services provide all the robust security features of a dedicated private cloud, plus complete support from installation and deployment to ongoing management and monitoring — making it quick to deploy and easier to manage. Learn more about our Private Cloud Services here.
Make the Most of your Remaining Maintenance Budget
Don’t let your remaining maintenance budget go to waste. With just a few weeks left in the year, you still have time to make strategic and smart investments that deliver immediate returns for your building performance and stakeholders. For help evaluating and assessing the most effective use of your leftover maintenance budget before the year ends, reach out to Albireo Energy today.
