Experience Has a Shelf Life

"No one cares about your 20 years' experience."

I saw that line in a LinkedIn post this week. Most of the replies disagreed with it. I half agree.

Experience does matter. Clients in FM still want to know who has been here before. When critical plant fails, a basement floods or a supplier goes under, experience can make the difference between a problem being contained and it becoming a crisis. Providers win work on track record as well as price, and employers value what experienced FM leaders have seen and learned.

But the post had a point. Experience isn't a fixed asset. It depreciates, and in FM it's depreciating faster than it used to.

What Experience Actually Gives You

When people talk about experience, they often bundle two different things together.

The first is pattern recognition: understanding how decisions tend to play out. I've seen how suppliers respond when margins are squeezed, why ambiguous specifications attract pricing contingency, and how apparently sensible savings can create problems elsewhere. Those lessons remain valuable.

The second is knowledge of the current market: who can deliver what, and at what cost.

I knew the FM market when companies such as Carillion and Interserve were major players. I understood their strengths, weaknesses and market positions. Knowing them as suppliers has no value today. But I saw Carillion's collapse first hand, as part of the PwC team working on the liquidation. I watched FM clients trying to keep their buildings running while their supplier failed around them. Those who knew their assets, their subcontractors and how they would step in were far better placed than those who didn't. That lesson hasn't dated.

The FM market has consolidated and hybrid working has changed how buildings are used. A view of the market formed five years ago may already be out of date in ways that matter.

The trouble is that, from the inside, both types of experience can feel the same. Experience gives you confidence whether or not it's current.

Where AI Changes the Picture

AI is speeding up much of the analytical work that used to signal expertise in FM: benchmarking a contract, reviewing a specification, summarising tender responses or analysing helpdesk and maintenance data to identify patterns in costs and failures. Tasks that once required days of manual analysis can, in some cases, be completed in hours.

Some of what experienced people were valued for is becoming available to anyone. If your edge was knowing where to find the data or having the right template, that edge is narrowing.

At the same time, experience matters when it comes to checking the output. AI produces answers that can look confident and complete. A benchmark can look right and still be wrong because the comparables don't match, part of the scope is missing or a pricing assumption doesn't fit the contract model. Experience is what tells you which differences matter.

But that only works if your experience is current. If your picture of the market is out of date, you'll check the AI against the wrong reference point and reach the wrong answer with even more confidence.

Twenty Years, or One Year Twenty Times

There's an old line about the difference between twenty years of experience and one year repeated twenty times. It's more relevant now than when I first heard it.

Time served tells you how long someone has been in the industry. It doesn't tell you whether they've kept learning.

If you're appointing an adviser for a major FM decision, four questions will tell you more than the length of their CV.

1. When did you last work on a live decision like this one, and what was different about it?

2. How has your view of the FM market changed in the last two years?

3. How are you using AI and data in your own work, and where have you found them unreliable?

4. What did you once believe about FM that you no longer do?

I'd pay most attention to the answer to the last one. Be cautious of anyone who can't explain what they've learned from decisions that went wrong.

Keeping My Own Experience Current

I've spent around 30 years working in and around FM, but I can't assume that what I learned ten or twenty years ago still holds true. As an independent adviser, I don't have a large firm's research team keeping me up to date. I have to make that effort myself.

That means talking to occupiers and providers about what they're seeing, reading lots, staying involved in live decisions and using AI in my own work. It also means being prepared to change my mind.

Outsourcing is a good example. Twenty years ago, it was often treated as the default answer to FM delivery. I now start from the other end. I work out what the organisation needs from its operating model and what it is prepared to manage, and only then decide who should deliver it. Sometimes that points to outsourcing. Sometimes it points to keeping services in house or bringing them back.

I've changed my view because I've seen how differently these decisions can play out. Experience is useful, but only if I'm prepared to test it against what's happening now.

What This Means When You Bring In Experience

So when you bring in experience, ask how recent it is as well as how long. Ask what has changed someone's thinking and how they know their view reflects today's market.

Experience isn't irrelevant, but it does have a shelf life.