Why LinkedIn Stopped Treating Fault Detection Like a Tool—and Started Treating It Like Infrastructure

At NexusCon 2025, Cristal Ortiz, Director of Workplace Sustainability & Engineering at LinkedIn, and Andrew Knueppel, Workplace Engineering Manager at LinkedIn, walked through LinkedIn’s four-year journey to scale fault detection across a global workplace portfolio. This presentation focuses less on tools and more on the organizational, financial, and operational hurdles that slowed—and eventually accelerated—adoption.

They unpack how a tech company had to fundamentally rethink how it approaches operational technology, facilities accountability, and business value to make FDD stick. The context: a large, global workplace portfolio where employee experience, cost control, and vendor performance all matter—and where “just build it ourselves” was a real internal debate.

Behind the paywall, you’ll hear exactly how LinkedIn reframed fault detection in business terms that finance, operations, and leadership actually cared about—and why that shift unlocked budget and momentum. Cristal and Andrew share what didn’t work early on, including funding FDD “on the margins,” underestimating change management with IFM vendors, and the surprise spike in maintenance costs before things leveled out.

They get specific about tying FDD data to CAPEX and OPEX decisions, holding IFM vendors accountable with fee-at-risk KPIs, and why direct software ownership mattered for data control and ROI. This recording is especially relevant for FM, energy, and workplace leaders trying to move from reactive maintenance to proactive programs without burning political capital—or patience.

Watch the full recording inside Nexus Pro →