Higher Ed Facilities Forum

Less Energy, More Campus: The Real ROI of Knowing Your System

Tracey Lerminiaux — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 08:28:54 GMT

"What keeps you up at night?"

That was the question Mark Helms put to his director of operations not long after arriving at the University of Florida as Assistant Vice President of Facilities Services.

The answer came quickly.

It wasn't a budget shortfall or a failed piece of equipment.

It was a building.

The Higher Ed Facilities Pipeline Isn't Broken at the Ends. It's Breaking in the Middle

Tracey Lerminiaux — Wed, 27 May 2026 20:44:54 GMT

"By the time you interview somebody you want and get through the six-week HR process, they've already had five job offers and they're gone."

Jim Jackson, Associate Vice Chancellor of University Operations at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, used that line at HEFF while talking about the reality of hiring in facilities right now.

Alongside John D'Angelo, Vice President of Capital Planning and Facilities at Indiana University, and John Shea, Chief Executive of Facilities and Infrastructure at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, the conversation focused on where the workforce problem is really starting to show up.

Not at the entry level. Not with the veterans nearing retirement. In the middle.

Supervisors. Foremen. Future leaders. The people facilities organizations are struggling hardest to keep.

Overheard at HEFF: When Enrollment, Budgets, and Space All Start Colliding

Tracey Lerminiaux — Mon, 04 May 2026 11:19:20 GMT

At HEFF, we host roundtable discussions on the real challenges facing facilities leaders at colleges and universities across higher education. These conversations are intentionally small so peers can talk openly about what’s happening on their campuses.

They’ve always been closed-door and unrecorded until now.

Using an AI note-taker and with the promise of anonymity, we were able to capture the conversation without attaching comments to any individual institution.

Overheard at HEFF: Capital Project Prioritization When Every Campus Project Is “Priority One”

Tracey Lerminiaux — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 15:38:59 GMT

At HEFF, we host roundtable discussions on the real challenges facing facilities leaders at colleges and universities across higher education. These conversations are intentionally small so peers can compare how they’re navigating similar challenges on their campuses.

They’ve always been closed-door and unrecorded until now.

Thanks to an AI note-taker, and a promise of anonymity, we were able to capture the conversation without attaching comments to any individual institution.

Three Campuses That Already Had the Data. They Just Needed the Context

Tracey Lerminiaux — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 11:33:29 GMT

Aaron Benz stood watching his son dig through murky water in Durango, searching for specks of gold mixed in with rocks and silt. It struck him: this is what facilities leaders do every day.

You're sifting through data: space inventories, utilization reports, maintenance records, looking for the insights that actually matter.

The data exists. The gold is in there. But without context, it's just rocks.

At HEFF, Benz, founder of CampusIQ, walked through three case studies showing what happens when you add context to data campuses already own — and how that shift can change major decisions around space, capital planning, and operations.

The risk wasn’t spending too little. It was spending big without understanding how space actually works.

Demographics, Politics, and AI Collide in Higher Ed

Tracey Lerminiaux — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 12:43:25 GMT

“We’re living in a world that’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. That’s not a prediction. That’s right now.”

Bryan Alexander opened his talk showing why enrollment pressure, budget constraints, and institutional challenges are no longer happening in isolation. These pressures are amplifying each other.

A higher education futurist and author, Alexander runs the Future of Higher Education Observatory, where he shares ongoing research on higher ed’s biggest shifts. At HEFF, he connected demographic decline, political pressure, and AI disruption into what he called a polycrisis: crisis after crisis intersecting and compounding.

When Consequences Drive Higher Ed Facilities Decisions: Cornell, UC San Diego & USF

Tracey Lerminiaux — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 12:27:12 GMT

“We’ve stopped talking about deferred maintenance. It became this big, ugly number that no one wanted to tackle.”

Lisa James, Associate Vice President of Facilities Operations at Cornell University, wasn’t trying to be provocative. She was describing reality—and heads immediately nodded across the room.

With federal research funding uncertainty, enrollment pressure, and operational budgets tightening across higher education, campus facilities leaders are being asked to make impossible choices about what stays online, what gets deferred, and what quietly slips into risk. That was the backdrop for a opening panel at the Higher Ed Facilities Forum (HEFF) in Bonita Springs.

James was joined by Niraj Dangoria, Vice Chancellor for Operations Management and Capital Programs at UC San Diego, and Everet Simmons, Vice President of Construction, Facilities, and Real Estate at the University of South Florida. The discussion was moderated by Lalit Agarwal, President and CEO of APPA.

Inside HEFF 2025: Where Campus Facilities Leaders Worked Through What’s Next

Tracey Lerminiaux — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 13:26:02 GMT

Budget cuts keep coming. Enrollment is shifting. Leadership turnover makes long-term planning harder than ever.

That’s the reality for campus facilities right now—and exactly why senior campus facilities leaders from universities across the country came together in Bonita Springs this November. Not to hear about problems they’re already living. To work through them with people who get it.

Why Higher Ed Facilities Leaders Can’t Miss HEFF 2025

Tracey Lerminiaux — Thu, 11 Sep 2025 12:40:52 GMT

If you're a higher ed facilities leader, you're looking for something different from the typical large conference experience. You want conversations that challenge your perspective. Connections that actually matter. And ideas you can bring back to campus to spark real change.

That’s exactly what the Higher Ed Facilities Forum delivers.

This November, an invite-only group of higher ed facilities leaders will gather at the Hyatt Regency Coconut Point Resort & Spa in Bonita Springs to step back from the daily grind and tackle what’s next in campus planning, construction, operations, and sustainability.

Here’s why you’ll want to be there:

How Sports Venues Make Sustainability Work—and What Higher Ed Can Learn

Tracey Lerminiaux — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 10:24:41 GMT

Roger McClendon knows how to build a global sustainability strategy and make it stick. As the first Chief Sustainability Officer at Yum! Brands (Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC), he helped implement sustainable design standards across 5,000 restaurants in 134 countries.

Now, as Executive Director of the Green Sports Alliance, he's helping stadiums, arenas, and entertainment venues embed sustainability into the core experience—not just treat it like a side initiative.

At the Higher Ed Facilities Forum, McClendon made his case to university facilities leaders: the sports industry has figured out how to make sustainability feel essential. Higher ed can borrow that playbook and get similar results.