Higher education facilities teams don’t have the luxury of slowing down. Between growing maintenance backlogs, tight budgets, and ongoing staffing challenges, most teams are focused on keeping things running while being asked to do even more with less.
Those are exactly the kinds of conversations that make AssetWorld worth attending.
AssetWorld is an annual user conference of facilities professionals who use AssetWorks' solutions, ReADY, AiM, and Go, to better manage their facilities operations. Through peer-led sessions, product insights, and open discussions, it gives campuses something that's genuinely hard to find: honest, peer-driven insight into what's working at institutions just like theirs.
At AssetWorld 2026, more than 600 professionals from over 90 institutions came together virtually, and across those conversations, a few clear themes emerged that teams are actively working through right now.
Here's what stood out.
AI was one of the most discussed topics at AssetWorld 2026, but the focus wasn’t on hype. It was on practical application.
The institutions making real progress shared a common thread: they didn't start with a broad AI strategy or a technology roadmap. They started with a specific operational problem that was costing their team time, accuracy, or both.
The most common use cases included:
These are day-to-day workflow-driven applications, which is why they’re gaining traction.
At the same time, governance came up in nearly every conversation. Facilities leaders are actively working through questions around approval processes, data security, and alignment with campus IT.
The institutions seeing the most progress aren’t necessarily moving faster because of technology; they’re moving forward because they’ve defined clear use cases and aligned early with IT and data policies.
Takeaway: AI adoption in facilities management is accelerating, but success starts with solving a specific problem, not launching a broad initiative.
Data governance was another consistent theme across AssetWorld 2026 sessions. Specifically, the challenge of keeping facilities data accurate, consistent, and trustworthy over time. The problems teams described were familiar:
These aren’t system limitations; they’re data ownership challenges. They get solved by building habits and accountability structures around data accuracy as an ongoing operational responsibility. Institutions that are getting the most value from their systems are addressing this head-on.
Two institutions shared approaches worth calling out:
Different approaches, but a shared mindset: data accuracy is an ongoing operational responsibility.
Takeaway: The effectiveness of any facilities system depends on the quality and consistency of the data behind it.
Want more reliable facilities data? See how AssetWorks Facilities supports long-term data accuracy and system integrity.
Preventive maintenance programs were another area where institutions shared candid lessons, especially around what happens when programs are built without considering team capacity.
At AssetWorld 2026, many teams described the same pattern:
The result is a program that looks strong on paper but doesn’t hold up in practice.
The institutions seeing the best outcomes are taking a more grounded approach. They start by understanding real capacity, how many labor hours are truly available (and what that realistically supports), and build their PM schedules around that baseline.
They’re also treating preventive maintenance as an evolving process: tracking completion rates, reviewing asset performance, and adjusting schedules based on real data.
Less about perfection at launch, and more about building something sustainable that gets better over time.
Takeaway: A preventive maintenance program your team can realistically execute will always outperform one they can’t sustain.
Beyond sessions and presentations, one of the most valuable aspects of AssetWorld 2026 was peer-to-peer learning.
Facilities teams across higher education are facing many of the same challenges: staff turnover, data accuracy, PM optimization, and increasing pressure for reporting and insights. What changes when you get 600 of those professionals in the same space is the opportunity to learn how specific institutions are solving those problems in practice, not in theory.
Some of the most practical ideas shared this year came from exactly those peer exchanges:
Neither of these came from a product roadmap. They came from teams doing the work and being willing to share what they figured out along the way.
The HeUG (Higher Ed User Group) extends these conversations beyond the conference, giving institutions a way to stay connected, share challenges, and keep learning from each other throughout the year.
Takeaway: Some of the most effective solutions in facilities management come from peers who've already solved the problem you're staring at, not just from platforms.
After AssetWorld 2026, one question stood out:
What challenge is your facilities team working through that another institution has already solved?
Chances are, that answer exists somewhere: in a session recording, a peer conversation, or a HeUG discussion thread. The value of AssetWorld isn't just in the programming. It's in the network and the shared knowledge that stays with you long after the conference wraps.
If you’re looking to keep those conversations going beyond the conference:
Join the Higher Ed User Group to stay connected with institutions navigating the same challenges.
And if you're curious about how AssetWorks' solutions can support your facilities program, we'd love to connect.
Schedule a conversation with our team today.