About OnPoint Strategic Partners
Experience from both sides of facilities
OnPoint Strategic Partners is built on decades of experience from both sides of facilities: corporate facilities leadership, supplier delivery, contracting and governance, industry board leadership and franchise ownership. That perspective is the foundation of everything we do.
What Drives Us
Vision, Mission, Purpose
Our Vision
A facilities industry performing at its peak, where owners and the partners who serve them build programs that deliver every day.
Our Mission
To equip FM service providers to perform at their best and help multisite owners build the programs they deliver into, through the CoreBuild™ Method.
Our Purpose
To elevate facilities from an afterthought to an advantage.
Founder & CEO
Catherine Barnes
Twenty-five years across facilities, construction, design, and real estate: building the programs the biggest operators rely on, and learning exactly what facilities buyers value.
- 25 years in Facilities, Construction & Design, and Real Estate
- Built Facilities programs for Fortune 500 companies
- Member of ConnexFM 2022-2025, Board Chair, 2024–2025
- Connex Foundation, Board of Directors member 2025-2029
- Board of Advisors, Good2Go 2026
- Chain Store Age Retail’s Top Women, 2025
- Has worked across the built environment: corporate facilities, industry board leadership, and franchise ownership
Vice President, FM Strategy & Integration
Chris Barnes
Chris brings 20 years of facilities, construction and operations leadership, with experience on both the supplier and FM buyer sides of the business. He partners with private equity groups, multi-site owners and growing companies to build FM programs: standing up a facilities function, developing budgets and capital plans, selecting systems, building vendor networks and supporting acquisition due diligence and integration.
- 20 years in Facilities, Construction and Operations leadership
- Builds national and centralized FM and Fleet programs for multisite organizations
- Led large multi-site portfolios of over $20M R&M & Capital programs
- Acquisition due diligence, integration and rebranding
- Supplier and FM buyer experience: both sides of the business
He also supports our supplier clients with practical insight into how FM teams evaluate partners, manage performance and make buying decisions.
Vice President, Client Strategy & Success
Josh Smith, JD
Josh brings deep expertise in facilities management, contracting, governance, and strategic sourcing, from multi-million-dollar supplier contracts and large-scale FM programs to advising executives on complex legal and operational issues, including enterprise-wide programs at a national retail pharmacy chain.
- Client strategy: aligns facilities programs with growth and business outcomes.
- Governance & oversight: turns KPIs and SLAs into measurable results.
- Sourcing & contracting: drives efficiency and resilience.
- Client success: builds partnerships on trust and lasting impact.
His background spans law, business acquisitions, entrepreneurship, construction, and service as a U.S. Army officer.
Our Story
Why we built OnPoint
Between us, we have spent decades inside facilities. We have built programs for national retailers and Fortune 500 brands, stood up FM and fleet departments from the ground up, negotiated the contracts that hold them together, and delivered the work as suppliers. Across all of it, we kept seeing the same thing: facilities programs dismantled before they ever had a chance to work.
Catherine lived it firsthand. She was rebuilding the facilities and energy program for a national retailer, with full autonomy, a talented team and a chance to design something with real purpose, while serving as Chair of the ConnexFM Board. Then, almost overnight, the retailer filed for bankruptcy, and the work, the progress and the momentum were gone.
As brick and mortar changed, the pattern grew. Retailers closed stores. National providers chased volume over value. PE-backed brands cut costs without a plan to protect their assets. And as more locations moved into smaller, leaner organizations, facilities slipped from the forefront to an afterthought, until a failure, a deal or a missed budget forced it back into view.
That was our aha moment. The industry didn’t need more patchwork solutions. It needed a strategic partner who could connect the dots across every level of the built environment.
So we built OnPoint Strategic Partners around the CoreBuild™ Method, a five-phase approach shaped by the RFPs, rollouts and broken handoffs we lived ourselves.
Today we work on both sides of facilities. We help FM service providers position as long-term partners, not just vendors. And we help multisite owners, operators and PE-backed brands build the facilities programs those partners serve, so assets are protected and growth has a plan.
Because facilities should never be an afterthought. It should be an advantage.
“We’re no longer building for just one brand. We’re building for an industry.”
Together, we’re using everything we’ve learned on both sides of facilities to elevate the owners and partners who keep this industry working. This is our purpose, and we’re just getting started.
Let’s build something that lasts
Whether you deliver facilities services or own the portfolio, the CoreBuild™ Method helps you build a program that lasts.