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Today’s Real Estate Technology Leaders: Harnessing the Power of Technology and Innovation to Bring About Change

Dave Clute

VP, Head of Workplace Technology
Zurich Insurance Group

As Vice President and Head of Workplace Technology for Zurich
Insurance Group, Dave Clute is responsible for the design, development,
implementation and operation of Information & Communication
Technologies (ICT) for the physical and virtual workplace. He has 30 years
of experience in architecture, engineering, systems development and
implementation of applications for the infrastructure management and
CRE industry.

Highlights of 2014
Over the past two years, we have been executing our strategy to develop
a comprehensive data warehouse, optimize our supply chain and build
a strong foundation for our data analytics platform by standardizing how
we classify and manage space, manage our global lease portfolio and
execute our capital projects.

As part of our overall strategy to design, construct and operate ‘truly
intelligent buildings’ for the Zurich portfolio, we assembled a team of
experts from across the industry to create the Zurich Intelligent Buildings
Design & Implementation Guide (ZIBDIG). This guide is now being rolled
out as a standard across the portfolio to provide a way for our supply
chain business partners in architecture, engineering, construction and
facilities management to deliver not only intelligent buildings, but a
world-class customer experience.

These guidelines are currently being tested and validated in a range
of project types presently in design, or under construction, in selected
locations across the globe. There are other projects underway in the UK
and Europe that will also utilize these new standards. One of the key chal-
lenges we had to overcome was finding ways to reduce the complexity of
highly integrated systems into concepts and business processes that can
be deployed and supported with minimal training and change manage-
ment into what we call ‘BaU’ or business as usual.

Plans for 2015
We will continue to concentrate on improving our business processes,
transform the way we design, build and operate our workplaces and seek

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