Buildings NY - Intelligent building and occupant productivity in real estate market

BuildingsNY Front gate - Manhattan

 

BUILDINGS NY Exhibition is annual event under the topic of "Unlock your property's profitability" for NYC building professionals, including Buildings Owners, Property Managers, Facility Engineers, Managing Agents, Energy Engineers and Superintendents.

 

CAVA Improving Organizational Productivity with Building Automation Systems report cover page

 

The most impressive session I had was "Improving Organizational Productivity with Building Automation Systems" by CABA(Continental Automated Buildings Association). 

 

Key word is changing in building industry from 'Building energy' to 'Occupant's health and well-being' and finally 'Productivity'. The reason is super clear.

 

"Capitalism"

 

There is a rule of thumb to estimate the operational cost of an office building in States, which is, 

 

1. Utility fee: $3 / sf

2. Space rent: $30 / sf

3. Staff pay roll: $300 / sf

 

As you can see the figures above, the cost for staff pay roll is much more significant than utility fee. Therefore, for the company who rent their office, it is no-brainer to regard the productivity much more important than building energy consumption. Furthermore, for the building owners, as a supplier of renting office, equipping such intelligent building components which can help improve the occupants' productivity may well be the competitiveness in real estate market.

 

Okay. We now kinda agree that 'Productivity' is critical but the question is 'How do you define the Productivity?'

 

Productivity diagram showing interaction between various factors

 

If it is an industrial company, it is relatively easy to quantify the productivity, however, in case of white collar work space, productivity is hard to be defined with just one word. According to this article, they argue that productivity in white-collar work place is better represented by a basket of metrics, sometimes measured in different units, that all influence the overall balance of costs and revenues. They coordinated with 2,000 decision makers in real estate market and conclude the key productivity factors as follow,

 

- Absenteeism

- Employee turnover rate

- Self-assessed performance

- Job satisfaction

- Health and well-being

- Complaints to FM(Facility manager)

 

And they said those metrics can be compared with baseline when we evaluate the effectiveness of 'better building' technology, just like when we are talking about the building energy efficiency. The baseline of those metrics is induced by them after reviewing 4,000 abstracts and 500 full publications. (You can find the baseline in the report)

 

Okay. Fair enough. Let's say we can measure the organizational productivity,  then the question is what is the most effective 'Better building technology?' The answer is 'We don't know yet'. This research is multi-stage research so in the following phase I hope they can reveal our question.

 

 

Personally, it was interesting because it's exactly what WeWork is working on. People might regard WeWork as a real-estate company but essentially, it is a tech company which vision is to maximize the occupant's productivity in their co-working office. Moreover, McKinsey's focus on infrastructure innovation  explain the innovation potency and opportunity in infrastructure. Now it all makes sense.

 

Intelligent building will change the infrastructure industry.  

 

 

 

 

 

[Link for the Report and Presentation]

To download the CABA "Improving Organizational Productivity with Building Automation Systems" Research Report, click here:

http://www.caba.org/documents/reports/CABA-IOPBAS-2017-Report.pdf

Download the full report presentation here:

http://www.caba.org/documents/forms/Org-Productivity-Full.pdf

Watch the final webinar presentation here:

http://www.caba.org/documents/Presentations/Productivity-Final-Webinar