This year, commercial real estate will be hit by two unyielding forces: uncertainty and complexity. Alone, each would present a significant challenge, together, well, let’s just say it’s going to be an interesting period of time. Clearly, these two forces will reshape what “good building management” means.

Since COVID, uncertainty has shifted from a cyclical phenomenon to something with a more structured and permanent nature. Things like volatile costs, selective capital, tightening insurance markets, and unevenly implemented regulatory expectations are not going away. Climate risk, or whatever we are calling it is no longer a “might happen”, yet its impacts are hard to predict and near impossible to model. Tenant demands are mixed, often contradictory, and changing faster than lease cycles can accommodate. And while long-range planning still matters, there are limited expectations in its accuracy.

At the same time, the operational setup inside buildings has become significantly more complex. Owners and managers are expected to integrate sustainability, resilience, technology, tenant experience, cybersecurity, workforce constraints, and financial performance into a single operating reality. Evaluations of buildings are now multi-dimensional. Decisions have become so layered with second- and third-order consequences.

And it gets worse, it’s not just that uncertainty and complexity are here, it’s the fact that they amplify each other.

Uncertainty pushes building teams to source more data, more controls, more safeguards. This leads to complexity with an increased number of systems, stakeholders, tools, and decisions requiring a response. This can’t do anything else but cause friction, leading to slower decision-making, unclear accountability, and teams stretched thin trying to manage competing priorities.

Complexity for operators means it’s a bigger challenge as building engineers are asked to keep aging systems running while they prepare for electrification. Property managers balance tenant expectations for flexibility and service with tighter budgets and staffing constraints. Sustainability leads are expected to deliver measurable outcomes while still trying to master smart tech and slowly understanding the challenges of incomplete data sets. Building managers must make capital decisions without complete information.

Until everyone catches up, resilience becomes less about preparing a build for external threats and more about building organizational capacity to adapt. Tools help, but the strongest teams are the ones that have clarity with clear priorities and expectations.

And where does AI fit into the mix, or are we already over-relying on technology? There is a school of thought that we need to balance optimization with navigation.

Navigation accepts that uncertainty is a given and that we need to prioritize decision quality rather than predictive accuracy. In practice, it means using AI as one of many tools, finding a common language across disciplines and performance frameworks that connect operations, risk, and value.

Most importantly, it brings experienced people back into the decision-making process. As systems become more complex, human judgment, trust, and collaboration are paying significant dividends. Buildings perform better when teams understand not just what they are doing, but why. If there is a trade-off, as there often is, everyone is made aware of it. It’s the pairing of human experience with the data set shown on a dashboard.

In 2026, uncertainty and complexity will continue to impact. The real question is whether organizations are equipped to operate effectively within them.