Maarten de Bruin
Fifteen years across facility management, corporate real estate, IWMS, smart buildings and applied AI. I write and speak about why the evidence buildings produce so rarely reaches the decisions it should inform.
Implementation taught me the problem. Governance is where it lives.
I have spent most of my career putting systems into large organizations. Workplace platforms, integrated workplace management systems, building analytics, sensor infrastructure, and more recently the AI layer that sits on top of all of it. The technical work is demanding and it is solvable. What kept repeating was something else, and it took years to name it properly.
Every implementation ended the same way. The organization gained visibility it had never had before, and the dashboards worked: the data was accurate, and the people responsible for the building could describe exactly what it showed. Then very little changed, not because anyone failed and not because the evidence was weak, but because the decision structures receiving that evidence had been designed for a world where information about buildings arrived once a quarter, and they were now surrounded by information arriving continuously.
That observation became a master's thesis on AI adoption in facility management, then a body of writing, and now a book. My work today sits between delivery and strategy. I help organizations see that the constraint has moved from the technology to the governance around it, and I help design the ownership, decision rhythm, and incentives that would let them act at the speed their evidence now arrives.
The building observes the organization in greater detail than the organization observes itself. Prologue · The Acceleration Gap
Three things worth knowing before we talk
Where I come from
I lead a consultancy and software implementation team focused on the Dutch market, and I have been with the same organization since 2011. That length of tenure matters for this argument in a specific way. I have seen the same clients three and four times across a decade, which means I have watched what happened after the implementation ended.
The pattern that produced this book is only visible on that timescale. Any single project looks like a success or a disappointment on its own terms. Across ten years and dozens of organizations, something more consistent shows up, and it has nothing to do with the quality of the technology anyone bought.
How I work
I start with a timeline rather than a diagnosis. Take one pattern your building data already shows, establish when it first became unambiguous, and establish when a resourced decision was minuted against it. Both timestamps come from records you already hold, which is what makes the resulting number difficult to argue with.
That number is not an accusation. It is the beginning of a governance question that most organizations have never been asked, and it reframes the conversation faster than another year of well-produced dashboards.
What I am careful about
I am wary of two moves that are common in this field. The first is treating a governance problem as a data quality problem, because a data quality problem has a budget line and a vendor and a governance problem does not. The second is promising that a new tool will produce decisions the organization has been structurally unable to make for years.
AI belongs in this work, and I use it daily. It changes what a finding costs to produce. It does not change what happens to a finding after it is produced, and that second part is where the money has always been.
Working position. The constraint is no longer what an organization can see. It is what an organization is structurally able to do about what it sees. Treating the second problem as if it were the first is the most expensive mistake in this field.
Where the work happens
- Delivery
- Manager, value delivery and consultancyLeading a consultancy and software implementation team serving the Dutch market, moving the delivery model toward strategic and innovation-focused work.
- Education
- Advisory board, Breda University of Applied SciencesContributing to how the next generation of facility and real estate professionals is prepared for continuous operational data.
- Profession
- Board member, IFMA Italy, Turkey and Cyprus chapterBringing the governance conversation into the international facility management community.
- Research
- Master's thesis on AI adoption in facility managementThe starting point for the argument the book develops into organizational governance.
- Writing
- Weekly publishing and international speakingEssays on facility management, corporate real estate and smart buildings, and keynote work on international stages.
- Book
- Author, The Acceleration GapBusiness Expert Press, expected early 2027.
The ones I am asked most
Short answers. The book takes each of them a great deal further.
What is the acceleration gap?
The acceleration gap is the distance between what an organization can see about its buildings and what it is structurally able to do about what it sees. Building technology now produces continuous, precise evidence about how space is actually used. Governance structures were designed for evidence that arrived once a quarter. Visibility comes first, the inability to act follows, and the financial and regulatory consequences follow from that inability rather than from the data.
Is the acceleration gap a data problem?
No. In almost every organization the data is sufficient and the analysis is sound. The constraint sits in ownership, decision rhythm and incentives. Treating it as a data problem is the most common misdiagnosis in the field, because a data problem has a budget line and a vendor while a governance problem has neither.
How do you measure the acceleration gap?
With four process measures: signal-to-decision time, decision-to-execution time, whether shared accountability is genuine or nominal, and the cost of local optimization relative to coordinated portfolio action. The first two can be computed from records the organization already holds, using the analytics reporting history and the governance minutes.
Who should read The Acceleration Gap?
Executives, heads of real estate, facility and workplace directors, and the finance and technology leaders who sit across from them. The book combines a theoretical foundation with management observation, and no organization in it is named.
When is The Acceleration Gap published?
Business Expert Press expects to publish in early 2027. There is no preorder link yet. Get in touch and you will hear the moment ordering opens.