Many facilities staffs find themselves short-handed, and it can affect nearly every space in a building, according to exhibitors at the 2026 North Texas Facilities Expo. The labor shortage is real, and it’s affecting not just facilities management, but also the skilled trades workers facilities managers need to hire. Four exhibitors at the show shared how their solutions can help mitigate the worst impacts of the labor shortage and empower the human staff you do have to get more done.
1. Robotic Staff Members
There are robotic options for many menial tasks now, from floor cleaning and scrubbing to lawnmowers, in-building delivery, pool cleaning, and more, said Ashutosh Jaiswal, owner of SmartDots Robotics Solutions. Farming out low-skill jobs like these to robots enables human staff members to concentrate on the tasks that actually need the human touch.
“The technology is here,” Jaiswal said. “It’s no longer the future. A lot of times there’s skepticism, but a lot of facilities are already deploying these solutions, and they’re already seeing the benefits of it.”
SmartDots’ robots are designed to go around objects rather than running over them, which helps ensure their safety, Jaiswal added.
2. Restroom Maintenance Made Easier
Tork, an Essity company, showcased restroom products from paper towels and toilet paper to soaps, sanitizers, air care, and more. Opting for high-capacity and high-volume dispensers can be a helpful option for short-staffed facilities, said Blake Godinich, sales development specialist for Tork’s commercial business. A dispenser that can hold more product doesn’t need to be checked as often, allowing maintenance personnel to cover more ground without risking complaints from guests and building occupants.
The company also offers a system called Tork Vision Cleaning, an IoT-connected tracking system that allows facility managers to track dispenser capacity and better determine how to deploy team members and where.
3. Supplemental Service Providers
Bringing in third-party services for certain aspects of managing your facility—for example, janitorial services or parking maintenance—is not a new concept to facility managers, but it’s important to ensure you’re bringing on the right partner. Transparency from the service provider is key, explained Christian Montalvo, senior business development for ABM. You should know the true cost of labor for your service provider and how long it will take to train the provider’s employees on your procedures.
“We’re very transparent on our labor costs,” Montalvo said, adding that adequate pay ensures employees stay with the company. “We always say, we’re not going to be your cheapest bid, but that’s why. We’re going to bring in the best partnership we can.”
4. Pest Solutions That Work Quickly
Nuisance birds are a plague for facilities across the nation. One Dallas-based service provider, North Texas Falconry, uses trained birds of prey to permanently free your property from nuisance birds without poisons or static deterrents. If you’ve ever noticed birds nesting on your building's spikes or roosting on top of fake owls, you may need to consider a different approach, said Ryan Corlew, owner of North Texas Falconry. Eliminating nuisance bird flocks from your property saves your crews time they’d otherwise spend cleaning up after birds, as well as time and money you’d invest trying static bird-deterrent strategies.
“It’s a green approach because you’re using nature to solve a nature problem,” Corlew said. “We’re not using chemicals. We’re using birds of prey to do exactly what they’re doing in nature.”
The trained birds fly around your property and hunt as they do in nature, applying real predator pressure to flocks of nuisance birds. Some birds will simply leave the area for good once they notice they’re in danger—for example, grackle roosts will relocate once they start seeing hawks flying around at night. Pigeons have a stronger homing instinct and have to be physically removed by the hawks, Corlew explained. You may start seeing results in as few as two to 10 days.
“[Nuisance birds] know the difference between static deterrents and a real predator presence,” Corlew added. “When you introduce a predator, it makes a huge difference to the results you see.”
