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CHERYL GRAY
QUADREAL

Cheryl Gray is Executive Vice President at QuadReal,
where she leads the Enterprise Innovation Team, pro-
viding expertise to the Canadian real estate portfolio in
sustainability, environmental health and safety, national
contracts and property management best practices.
QuadReal Property Group is a global real estate invest-
ment, operating and development company whose port-
folio spans 23 cities across 17 countries. Cheryl is also
the 2019 President-Elect of the Institute of Real Estate
Management (IREM), the first international member to
hold an officer role. IREM is an international association
representing nearly 20,000 members united to advance
the profession of real estate management.
interesting. That led QuadReal to conduct a similar sur-
Tell us about the technology history at QuadReal. vey of our buildings. We had to be sure to ask the right
Our story is unique because QuadReal is a new company, questions about all of the buildings and then we ran the
but we started with an $18 billion real estate portfolio. information through our own risk matrix. We learned a lot
Our owner, British Columbia Investment Management from that.
Corporation (BCI), formed QuadReal Property Group and
internalized management of all their real estate assets in We’re spending a significant amount of time with our
February 2017. development teams to ‘build it right’ and working with
the property teams doing major repositioning and capital
Shortly after joining QuadReal, I attended an industry event investments. Big capital investments aren’t typically some-
where Boston Properties’ head of IT was speaking and lis- thing you replace every two years; for example, a building
tened to him describe ransomware and malware cyber-at- automation system lasts for a long time. We are helping
tacks that were occurring on properties. Also, the trade the teams focus on contract language and building infra-
publications and attendees at industry events were all talking structure specifications.
about smart buildings and there was a lot of chatter about
PropTech. I realized that we needed to focus on these issues Has technology changed the way you spend your
within the BCI portfolio. In mid-2017, I presented a plan to time and focus?
our C-suite to launch a digital innovation team for our proper- It’s actually always been about technology—we just didn’t
ties and they agreed to move forward with the idea. look at it that way. We were looking at solving problems.
For sustainability initiatives, the things we do such as
Today, the QuadReal Digital Innovation team works closely greenhouse gas reporting and energy management all rely
with the development teams on projects to embed our on technology. We need to track all of our environmen-
smart building strategy. We also collaborate with our prop- tal information so that we know where asbestos was, or
erty teams on a wide array of building technology matters PCBs, for example.
and with our international division as they continue to
expand our global portfolio. Historically, when we’ve done an RFP for a building automa-
tion system or lighting controller we didn’t ask about patch
What are your highest priority technology protocols or what the operating system was, because we
initiatives for 2019? looked at it as a building system—not technology.
Cybersecurity initiatives for the existing built environment
is a top priority. We have to focus on the foundation first There’s considerable debate about IT and OT; the whole
and really understand where the risks are, if any, and work industry is shifting. As you layer in the further complica-
with the property teams to address them. At Realcomm tion of building system vendors that haven’t been asked
last year, a speaker from GSA talked about how they the questions we’re starting to ask—such as patch proto-
reviewed their portfolio and did a risk matrix; it was very Continued on page 59

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