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and have the right technical skills to with our IT department to use
manage very sophisticated buildings to technology more as a service.
optimal performance. We’re not done We have a standard now
yet; it’s a journey. that we provision new office
The other challenge was change man- buildings with conferencing
agement relating to getting people out systems, follow me printing,
of offices. We’ve gone to a much more soft phones, real time reserva-
mobile work environment. Up to 50 per- tions systems for office space,
cent of our space is unassigned in some robust network access, and
cases. But that doesn’t mean hoteling or diagnostic meeting input so
work-from-home—that’s an old tech- you can bring any device into
nique. We’re driving employees back to our buildings and they will
the office. The Wall Street Journal wrote
about this trend, it’s been happening in
the industry for some time. The idea is
that having your teammates in physical
proximity breeds collaboration; collabo-
ration drives engagement, which drives
innovation. It’s the informal nature of
that work environment that leads to im-
proved partnering and communications
amongst your employees.

RC: Looking ahead, what will your focus
be over the next 12 to 18 months?
Huaco: We’re continuing the rollout of our
campus hub projects. But the big thing
we’re working on now is standardizing
smart building technology. Our focus
has been on developing our owner’s
Performance Operating Requirements
(POR). We have buildings full of tech-
nology that aren’t optimized to their work. We are making the buildings very disruption. Having ubiquitous tech-
full capability. With the advent of sensor flexible through the use of mobility to nology that’s easy to use is vital; and I
technology we are now very selective as increase operational efficiency. emphasize the word easy, as the data
to what goes on the network. It’s finding it produces should be actionable by a
the right balance to create an operation- RC: What trends do you see impacting the layman and not necessarily an engi-
ally efficient smart building, and to run it future of our industry? neer. For us it’s extremely important,
from an automated perspective. Huaco: The Internet of Things. A good because some of our facilities, especially
This POR spec is for all buildings going example of this is our implementation healthcare, run 24 hours a day. Uptime
forward. We have four types: office, of energy efficient lighting, with occu- is paramount. The risk to the business is
industrial, medical, and retail. It will tell pancy sensing technology and lighting too great not to have buildings running
us what type of lights we want, if the control systems tied to our sustainability at optimal performance. Anything we
lighting system is networked to the network. This not only reduces energy can do to lower our costs and mitigate
BMS system, building maintenance costs, but has the additional benefit of our risk on those buildings through
management, everything. We do occupancy sensoring so we now know technology pays huge dividends.
remote monitoring via a dashboard, so how the space is being used. We are As we move forward, I see the bigger
somebody doesn’t need to physically able to monitor utilization in real time. role of corporate real estate as a driver
be in the building. If something is out of The big thing for us going into the of change for the business: I’m an
tolerance for whatever reason, we’ll get future is doing a lot more in preventive enabler of change. Our group is lever-
the notification and we can adjust the maintenance and predictive analytics. aging facilities and buildings to drive
equipment virtually. We call it manage- If you can predict something is going change, not only to be much more
ment by exception. to fail before it fails, the benefit is huge efficient, but to create an environment
Another area we’re working on is in terms of maintaining greater uptime that drives greater collaboration and
workplace technology. We’re working of facilities and reducing business drives cultural change.

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