Data-Anchored Environmental Intelligence Redefines Modern Pest Management

In a place as regulated and high stakes as a hospital, a building stops behaving like a static structure and starts acting more like a living organism. Now, environmental intelligence is forcing a move away from intuition-based reactions and toward a world where every decision can be traced, questioned, and justified. That culture of explainability is quickly becoming the baseline for trust and compliance in modern facilities management.

At the center of the shift is Keith Young, a Pest Control Professional for the Department of Veterans Affairs. An Army veteran with 30 years of domain expertise, Young has poured his field knowledge into developing the AI system PestScore and believes its real value shows up when it amplifies human judgment with a clear, defensible rationale behind every decision. His philosophy is simple: treat facilities as living entities, and build a constantly updated "fingerprint" of the building over time.

"Now we've got data to actually show why we're making the decisions we make. It’s no longer just checking boxes or saying we found something here or there. We can backtrack, understand the variables, and explain exactly how an issue came to be. That lets us move from reacting to problems to truly getting ahead of them," says Young. It turns pest control from a series of isolated responses into a predictive intelligence system that can map risk long before a problem appears.

• Trust me: But in facilities management, new technology lives or dies on trust. Young found that earning it depends on anchoring the AI in established standards. "It's built on the logic we provide, which gives us true explainable AI. That's the foundation of trust. Teams can rely on it because they know the guidance reflects professional pest management standards tailored to their facility," he explains. "When we show leadership and staff that the system is grounded in the regulations we’re required to follow, that builds trust. At its core, the AI is credible because it's built on those established standards."

By understanding the "why" behind an incident, teams can move from simply documenting the past to actively predicting the future. That forensic capability turns a static report into a living intelligence system. The process elevates data from a passive artifact into an active partner.

• Surfacing the 'why': "Say that there were a few variables: rodent harborage nearby, a food source nearby, and an entry point. If I find that a rodent had gotten into a space, now we can backtrack and show that. And that's how we get that 'why,'" says Young. That ability to retrace the chain of variables turns a single incident into a map of cause and effect, giving teams the insight they need to predict where the next risk might emerge.

• Problems be gone: "With paper forms or Excel, you can’t really talk to your data. With AI, I can upload three months of information and actually ask it to look for trends. I can sit and have a real conversation with the data, pull out variables, and run if-then scenarios in seconds." It turns static reporting into an interactive analysis loop that helps his team spot patterns long before they become problems.

For all its power, Young is adamant that the AI is a tool, not an oracle. An expert must remain at the center to interpret the findings and make the final call, upholding a core principle of fieldwork.

• Encroached territory: Human judgment becomes essential the moment context enters the picture. "I could tell AI that I found a German roach in the sub-basement and another in the MICU, but the AI doesn’t inherently understand that those situations carry very different implications. It can’t grasp what that means for patients, families, or infection control. You need a human in the loop to interpret that context and make the right call."

Looking forward, the goal isn’t just a smarter pest control system. It’s a blueprint for truly smart facilities. Young sees a future where pest management data connects with air quality monitoring, humidity control, and other building systems to create a more efficient and responsive environment. "I really think it could help us move toward smart facilities in a way that's more streamlined, effective, and environmentally friendly," he says. "For what I do, I can tailor my treatments. Now I can justify reducing the amount of pesticides I use and explain exactly why." Major industry players like Rentokil are already heading in this direction, a sign that the wider market is beginning to catch up.

For Young, the journey always returns to his decades of field experience. The system comes straight from the realities of day-to-day work, born from a need he kept seeing over the years. "This is something that's built from the field," he explains. "I've been doing pest control for so long, I saw the gap that was there. I knew there had to be a better way to tie my day-to-day data into something that gives me real insight into what's happening in this building," he concludes.