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f you haven’t heard by now, the inaugural conference of the Industrial Asset Management Council (IAMC) in October was an unqualified success – highlights of the meeting in Savannah can be found in this issue’s IAMC Insider.
Attendees, who included corporate real estate executives and service providers, participated in a survey following the conference, and the results couldn’t be more gratifying to me and my colleagues, who are charged with producing IAMC’s official magazine.
They were asked to rate the value they place on 22 topics, ranging from environmental issues and management to lease administration to economics. In analyzing the results, I decided to focus mainly on what the “active” respondents – the corporate real estate executives – had to say. Here are their top 10 topics ranked in order of importance or relevance: (1) real estate management; (2) environmental issues and management; (3) surplus property disposition; (4) strategic planning; (5) benchmarking; (6) shareholder value growth and asset management – a tie; (7) lease administration and site selection – a tie; (8) financial management; (9) construction management; (10) project management and facility management – a tie.
Topics of significantly less value to this group include value chain management, transaction support, e-business, innovative workplace strategies and leadership development. I doubt the respondents would say these topics are unimportant. They’re just less relevant than the top 10 listed above.
Here’s why. The days when corporate real estate managers could afford to dabble in the softer, less relevant set of issues are basically gone. They may make for interesting, if lofty, conference or article content. But they will usually leave the audience member or reader grasping for something concrete to take home.
IAMC active members, and I daresay most corporate real estate executives, want practical, specific material they can apply immediately. It’s the difference between nice-to-know and need-to-know content, be it conference programming or magazine articles. Since our mandate is to deliver the latter, Site Selection’s renewed focus on industrial projects and the management of property assets will well serve the association and the broader industry we cover.
Till next time,
