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Now, we focus solely on being innovative, designing systems
Realcomm: Mike, tell us about Forest City’s technology journey.
How has your role changed in the last five years? What was
the genesis for the creation of your smart buildings infra-
structure group?
Mike: I guess the journey dates back to 2003, when Jim Young
met with our management team and told us we really should
create an internal group that understood both the IT side as
well as the development and operations side of the business.
This would ensure we were designing the infrastructure for
our buildings correctly from the ground up. So we formed
our Building Technology Services group, which I am currently
running. Initially, we focused strictly on structure and wiring as
it related to voice, data and video services, but that quickly ex-
panded into security and sustainability, and now also includes
parking and Wi-Fi systems throughout the buildings. Last year,
my group was rolled up under the IDS umbrella and that’s
really been beneficial for us. In the past, we had day-to-day
operational responsibilities, what I call blocking and tackling,
which means putting out fires for the 200 sites we manage.
and researching.
Realcomm: Darrell, when we interviewed you last year, you
told us about the 500 million data transactions you were col-
lecting each day. How are you using that data? Have there
been any issues or setbacks that have kept you from moving
forward with the Energy-Smart Building project?
Darrell: The way I would characterize it is be careful what you
wish for because you may just get it! Before you have the
ability to get at the data you don’t always know the extent of
the problem(s). As we began to pull it, normalize it, and lever-
age it, I suddenly could see everything that was broken on
campus and it scared me. My problem then became, how do
we prioritize the repairs and put principles against our time?
Having all this data at your fingertips is great—it’s providing a
wealth of information—but it can also be overwhelming. We’re
learning to prioritize our responses in two ways: one is cost; we
know the cost of the repair and the cost in wasted energy. The
other is value; to Microsoft, the employee experience is super
important, so we want to make sure employees are productive
and comfortable. Each space is assigned a value that is built
right into the system so those alerts that impact the employee
experience get immediate attention.
Realcomm: Tell us how your technology strategy has evolved in
the last 12 months. Have events transpired that caused you
to adjust your focus?
Mike: In the past, we’ve spent most of our efforts convincing
ourselves (internally) that there was a need for smart buildings.
We were consistently selling the idea to our stakeholders and
explaining the new technology trends. In the past 12 months
it seems everyone’s bought into the idea of creating smart
buildings. The biggest question now is what system or systems
do we install? As you’ll see at this year’s IBcon conference,
there are more than 70 solutions in play that can make your
buildings ‘smarter’.
Darrell: Now that the building integration has been completed,
we’re looking to next integrate gas, water and irrigation—ev-
erything that has a meter on it. Another area I thought we’d be
at by now, but we haven’t because we’ve had so much success
on the mechanical side, is the employee behavior. Eventually,
we’d like to present the data we collect to the employees and
get them involved in better sustainability practices.
Realcomm: What’s on the horizon in the next year or two? What
plans for improvements are currently in place?
Darrell: On the immediate horizon, we’re streamlining the
integration system. Today, when a fault occurs for an asset we
push a button and send an alert to the work order system.
What we’re working on next is having the asset actually create
its own work order. The exciting thing about that is it takes the
‘people glue’ out of the situation, freeing up my resources for
other things—like getting ready to do smart building deploy-
ment in China and India. Today, we’re the Redmond Operating
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