by Admin
August 17, 2011 4:09 PM
In the June 2011 edition of Buildings magazine, Associate Editor, Janelle Penny, discusses how the use of dashboards—in this case, energy tracking dashboards—provide FM personnel a broad view of their portfolios’ activity ("Dashboards Put FMs in the Driver's Seat"). This bird’s eye view aids building managers in the task of quantifying the progress of facilities-related initiatives.
According to Penny, "A dashboard can play many roles, but in a nutshell, the tool allows you to compare usage between campuses, floors, and departments to spot inefficiencies or drive competition…" Furthermore, increased access to IWMS dashboards can help move along building initiatives by demonstrating to occupants their current rates of success and can foster a healthy dose of competition between occupants or company departments in achieving their organization-wide energy consumption/green goals.
It is not only in the world of energy usage tracking where IWMS dashboards can play a major role in achieving FM goals, dashboard tiles can be configured to demonstrate many facilities or real estate-related metrics. Dashboards that monitor critical requests, service provider performance, and overall building activity have become the cornerstone of IWMS technology and look to grow in importance as the integration of smart building solutions and IWMS software continues to advance in both the amount of data that can be presented and multitude ways it can be structured to suit an organizations needs and goals.
by Admin
April 21, 2011 2:35 PM
This blog revisits some strategic and tactical questions that organizations might utilize to determine the state of readiness of their real estate technology platforms. These questions might be broadly answered along three basic parameters…where the “information” is:
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Based on our portfolio, infrastructure and occupancy levels, are we properly staffed from a facility operations and maintenance standpoint?
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Are our service providers delivering, according to established SLA’s?
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Do we have an easy and effective “facility request” process in place for our occupants, and are they pleased with our service execution?
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Are our respective teams (i.e. Project, Occupancy, Sustainability, Lease and Facility Management) collaborating to the fullest extent, and does our technology facilitate this process?
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Can we measure and feel confident that a high degree of deferred maintenance is not building up on owned infrastructure assets?
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Are we maximizing our real estate usage (i.e. high shadow vacancies, missing collocation possibilities, etc.)?
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Do we have an effective means of measuring and leveraging our current lease positions relative to market forces (i.e. possibility for early renewal or renegotiations based on changing conditions)?
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Is there an efficient means in place to consolidate our global locations to a common currency and measurement standard, to enable true comparative analysis?
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Have we optimized our locations and floor plans to minimize cost and support recruitment?
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Are we offering our clients transparency on the total cost of occupancy (TCO), to enable effective choices regarding their space and location commitments?
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If a merger or change in business condition rapidly materialized, would we be in a position to report on our locations, density of occupancy, and overlay this data with a possible partner to maximize space, lease and strategic fit?
To be truly effective real estate technology must not only provide a powerful source of information (i.e. opportunities) and readily accessible answers to the aforementioned questions (and a host of others), but be practical and easy to use across disciplines. At times the choice and selection of technology is made in a somewhat one dimensional fashion and fails to account for all the relevant users and constituencies leading to a gap in obtaining the desired results.
For additional information in this regard, please feel free to explore www.bigcenter.com and/or contact us at contactus@bigcenter.com.
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