IFMA’s Facility Management Pulse Report for October–December 2025 is out, and the headline is blunt: project delays are no longer the exception. Only 10% of organizations report all projects on schedule. Most are seeing 1–40% delayed, and about 17% are dealing with delays on more than 40% or all of their projects.
“Only 10% of organizations report that all projects are on schedule. Most report that 1%–40% of projects are delayed, and about 17% report that more than 40% or all projects are delayed.”
IFMA FM Market Pulse Report, Oct–Dec 2025
The top drivers are scope changes (51%) and supply chain issues (49%), followed by permitting/regulatory approvals (34%) and funding delays (32%). Quality and safety problems barely register. This is planning and market friction, not execution failure.
The part that matters most for ESG-focused owners is the contract response. Facilities managers are tightening terms to manage volatility and compliance risk:
- Cybersecurity / data security requirements: 55%
- Price-escalation clauses: 47%
- ESG or sustainability provisions: 45%
- Shorter price-hold windows: 30%
Almost two-thirds are also rescoping, deferring, changing vendors, or shifting to domestic/regional suppliers because of tariffs. Projects are still moving — just with tighter controls on pricing, compliance, and information.
What this means for your retrofit and LL97 work
If you’re sequencing capital work on existing buildings, the retrofit priority stack still holds: do the highest-impact, lowest-regret items first unless engineering says otherwise. The IFMA data just adds urgency — scope creep and supply delays are the two biggest killers, so locking ESG and data requirements into the contract early protects both schedule and compliance.
For New York owners, this lines up directly with LL84 benchmarking as the LL97 prerequisite and the 2030 cap tightening scenarios. You need clean energy data before you can defend a retrofit plan or negotiate an adjustment. The same discipline that protects against scope changes also protects against missing the cap.
Practical takeaway: when you update master services agreements or vendor onboarding, add a short ESG/data clause — emissions reporting per job, in your format, as a condition of final payment. It turns the 45% trend into a controlled advantage instead of another source of delay.
Go deeper on your own
- IFMA FM Market Pulse Report, Oct–Dec 2025 — the full quarterly snapshot and Workload Index.
- Facilities Dive summary — quick read on the delay drivers and tariff impact.
- IFMA Research & Benchmarking hub — operations, sustainability, and O&M benchmarks.
- IFMA Tools & Resources — knowledge library, standards, and webinars.
Source: IFMA FM Market Pulse Report, Oct–Dec 2025 (via Facilities Dive summary). Not legal or procurement advice — building-specific.