Facilities management is about to change faster than it has in 20 Years

Autonomous AI agents are beginning to run service, back office, and controls, reshaping how the UAE operates real estate portfolios. 

As the UAE scales its real estate ambitions, attention is shifting from how fast assets are built to how well they are operated. In this exclusive interview, we explore how Autonomous AI is emerging as a practical lever for facilities teams managing complex portfolios at scale. 

Facilities management rarely makes headlines. It should. In the UAE, from Dubai’s multi tenant towers to large enterprise estates in Abu Dhabi, FM decides whether a premium asset actually runs as intended, day after day. 

The challenge has not been technology but execution. Too much work is still administrative, logging requests, routing work orders, chasing updates, validating invoices, escalating exceptions, and compiling reports. Even in well digitised organisations, progress often depends on supervisors and managers manually pushing workflows across shifts. That strain shows up first in markets that operate continuously.

Now AI is moving beyond dashboards into something more consequential, autonomous agents that execute work. These are not pilots or assistants. They run workflows end to end across shifts so service delivery and controls keep moving even when people are offline. 

Prabhu Ramachandran, Founder & CEO, Facilio Inc., said, “AI is moving from insights to execution. Facilities is one of the last large operations still held together by manual coordination. Autonomous agents change that, turning FM from a system that records work into one that keeps work moving continuously. With Facilio, service delivery, compliance, and reporting run with consistency at scale. This is the start of the autonomous era in facilities and it will raise the bar for operational performance.” 

What’s Already Happening in the UAE

Early UAE deployments already show what this looks like in practice. Agents are taking on a meaningful share of back office workload, with service requests progressing overnight, invoice issues flagged before approval, and exceptions surfaced without manual reporting. In some cases, manual effort has been reduced by up to 40 percent while consistency across shifts has improved. 

At one large multinational FM service provider in the UAE, a customer support line is now fully autonomous. The system responds 24/7 across phone, email, and WhatsApp, creates and progresses service requests, escalates exceptions when needed, and keeps customers updated automatically, reducing SLA risk while strengthening client trust. 

Why this matters for the region

For UAE enterprises operating at scale, reliability and consistency are non negotiable. Autonomous operations offer a way to absorb growth without inflating teams. This shift is underway, and the largest portfolios will feel it first.