Facilities and Finance: The Newest Power Couple

The relationship between facilities and finance teams has traditionally followed a predictable script: facilities submit capital requests to fund building maintenance, and finance teams push back on costs, timings, and priorities. Facilities professionals leave these conversations feeling their operational and asset needs weren’t understood or prioritized, and finance feeling as if they lacked adequate justification for major expenditures. 

When both teams collaborate on long-term capital planning, not just during annual budget reviews or when addressing building emergencies, the relationship improves. Facilities teams feel their operational needs are understood and met, and finance teams gain the context and data they need to justify major costs.  

This kind of collaborative planning isn’t primarily driven by better technology or data systems, though those help. It requires facilities managers working as strategic parters with finance. And, in doing so, finance will recognize that infrastructure represents millions of organizational assets that require collaborative, long-term planning.   

For facilities leaders, building this partnership might be as important as the buildings themselves.  

We’re on Different Timelines 

Facilities teams operate on asset lifecycles, while finance teams operate in fiscal quarters. This calendar gap creates more than scheduling inconvenience, but a fundamental mismatch in how the two departments plan, prioritize, and justify spending. 

Consider what happens under this misalignment. Before Boston Public Schools (BPS) implemented a facilities condition assessment program, the district lacked the data infrastructure to anticipate and communicate capital needs ahead of budget cycles. Without comprehensive, up-to-date information on building conditions, funding requests were harder to justify and compete poorly against other priorities. “Right now” emergency maintenance needs drove costs up, and the facilities team struggled to gain buy-in for “for the future” investments. It wasn’t until BPS began tracking asset data continuously and aligning it with budget timelines that they could reduce emergency repairs, optimize resource allocation, and present funding requests that finance viewed more favorably. 

On paper, it seems like facilities teams should be able to outrun budget surprises through proactive planning. And in many ways, they already are. According to recent data from Brightly Software, 91% of organizations are using asset management systems for preventive maintenance, 88% believe doing so reduces costs, and 87% say doing so prevents unplanned downtime.  

That said, preventive maintenance isn’t a catch-all. While it helps anticipate repairs and reduce costs, the larger goal of proactive planning is demonstrating facilities’ expertise and command over organizational assets. To finance, that perception of preparation builds trust by demonstrating how the true work of facilities is managing risk, not responding to emergencies. 

When facilities fail to sync their expected asset needs with finance calendar, they’re forced into a position where they either advocate for repairs that seem premature to finance unfamiliar with long term capital planning, or they wait until failure is imminent face the same repeat accusation: “why didn’t you tell us sooner?” 

Learning Each Other’s Love Language

Even when facilities and finance teams align their calendars, they still face a more basic challenge: they speak different languages. 

Buildings speak in physical terms. A facilities manager describes deferred maintenance accumulation, asset criticality ratings, and end-of-lifecycle replacements—precise descriptions of a building’s physical reality and the language necessary to diagnose problems and plan solutions. A CFO, on the other hand, thinks about ROI, payback periods, budget variance, and cost avoidance. So, when a facilities team presents a capital request using only technical language, they fail to communicate what finance needs to hear: the business impact of failure and why this asset should be prioritized over others competing for the same capital dollars. 

According to a 2025 survey of education leaders, 64% reported approving facility requests they didn’t fully understand, and 58% admitted to deferring requests that may have been critical simply because they couldn’t distinguish urgent needs from routine maintenance. The implications of facilities and finance being lost in translation go beyond the budget itself. When finance leaders socialize capital decisions with boards, executives, or other stakeholders, they lack the information and context needed to advocate effectively on facilities’ behalf. 

A good partnership means facilities and finance need to meet in the middle and adapt to the language of the other, but facilities professionals need to speak in the finance language to get their needs met.

Repairing the Relationship  

The tension between facilities and finance teams typically boils down to timing. Facilities see a 20-year-old boiler that needs to be replaced before it fails. Meanwhile, finance sees a budget line that wasn’t planned for this quarter. In this scenario, both teams speak from their areas of expertise (equipment lifecycles and asset condition on one side, fiscal quarters and budget variance on the other), but without a shared planning framework, every capital need becomes a negotiation instead of a strategy.

A good partnership means that facilities and finance need to meet in the middle and adapt to each other’s language. But when engaging with finance, facilities professionals need to think like finance. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Share calendars: Conduct comprehensive condition assessments early and present multi-year capital projections before budget season opens, not when assets fail. This gives finance visibility into what’s coming over the next three to five years, enabling them to plan capital allocation rather than react to emergencies.
• Speak their language: When requesting a boiler replacement, also present risk analysis, total cost of ownership comparisons, and business impact if the asset fails during operations. Facilities’ expertise doesn’t change the presentation format. Facilities teams must reframe requests in the terms that finance requires to evaluate competing capital priorities and defend expenditures to boards.
• Align priorities: Don’t wait for finance to impose their criteria. Proactively align on what matters to leadership (business continuity, risk, operational impact, strategic alignment) and prioritize requests accordingly. When facilities and finance share decision criteria upfront, budget conversations become capital planning, not negotiation.

Alignment between facilities and finance is not just a best practice; it’s a financial imperative that drives meaningful, lasting value fires to build a sustainable, resilient enterprise. Alignment matters because unplanned, emergency repairs are consistently more expensive than proactive, scheduled investments. When finance and facilities collaborate, they can anticipate needs, direct resources to the most urgent priorities, and avoid the recurring cycle of crisis spending. This collaboration directly improves ROI on budget by ensuring every dollar is used effectively and delivers measurable value to the organization.

But the benefit is more than just budget efficiency. When costs are predicted and justified in financial language, finance can report confidently to stakeholders, leadership can make decisions based on real risk and opportunity, and the entire organization gains clarity on where money is going and why. Ultimately, aligning facilities and finance is what transforms uncertainty into stability. It builds trust, creates business cases that withstand scrutiny, and gives leaders the clarity to make decisions that shape the organization’s future, not just respond to its past.

A Partnership Worth Investing In 

The best relationships are built on learning how to communicate, plan, and prioritize together. Facilities teams will always understand buildings better than finance does, and finance will always see the full story hidden in every line item across the entire organization. 

When facilities teams think like finance (showing up before budget season with three- to five-year projections, translating asset condition into business continuity risk, and prioritizing based on strategic alignment rather than just equipment age) budget requests become business cases that get funded.