Features

“Many already use the Internet, yet I doubt many are using it for construction management. The speed of connectivity and the range of companies committed to working on the Internet are growing so fast that this will cease to be a business obstacle within a very short time frame. Your entire team will build the […]

Ever since Michael Hammer, the guru of Business Process Re-engineering, made the observation years ago that the business world has not adequately considered the effect re-engineering has on the notion of workplace, work space design experts have struggled to understand the relationship between the two concepts. What role does workspace really play in productivity? Can […]

Polled corporate executives pinpoint today’s top 10 U.S. labor markets Today’s drum-tight U.S. labor evokes James Marshall’s 1848 wisdom. Building a sawmill near Coloma, Calif, Marshall spied glittering flecks. He dipped his hand into the icy American River and then roared, “By God, boys, I believe I’ve found a gold mine!” The California Gold Rush […]

Labor may be spare, but it’s out there. And broad-ranging corporate strategies are finding it. What would you ask for if you could get just about any expansion incentive imaginable? That was the situation for United Parcel Service (UPS) in 1998. Its new cargo-sorting hub would employ 6,000-plus with a US$250 million annual payroll. Clearly, […]

Universities and proactive businesses are crafting ever-more-relevant job training programs designed to give employers in their area an edge in the labor pool. Work-force training programs are seeing substantial inflows of capital as state and local economic development agencies seek to make their available workers more competitive. This is among the findings of a recent […]

Opening nine major U.S. customer service centers in a mere three years, Sprint PCS has fine-tuned a system for rapidly adding the labor others can’t even find. b y     J A C K     L Y N E “Finding a place with higher unemployment is ideal. But you’re not going to find a U.S. […]

“Leadership,” says Warren Benis, “can’t be taught; it must be learned, grown through experiences.” The industry’s experience grew a bit on Apr. 30, as Site Selection presented its Corporate Real Estate Leadership Awards to eight executives, chosen by SS’s editorial board from industry-wide nominations. (Two other winners were tapped as “Editors’ Picks.”) Appropriately, the Leadership […]

Abstracts of recent major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate (CCE) association. “Transforming the Workplace through Value-Based Management,” IDRC Tennessee World Congress Opening General Session, Oct. 18, 1999: Successful value-based CRE management requires understanding corporate goals and how CRE can add value, said Stern Stewart & Co.’s […]

Site Selection: HQ’s real estate holdings are growing by leaps and bounds, thanks to the merger of Frontline Capital’s serviced office unit, VANTAS, with HQ’s properties. What is your role in managing this growth? Ron Adam (right): Completion of the deal is a little ways off, but we’re now in an interim period, which is […]

China’s challenges were center stage at IDRC’s record-breaking March 27-28 Beijing World Congress, “Asia and Corporate Real Estate: Global Infrastructure Rises to the Next Level,” which drew an Asian record turnout of 172. “This Congress was a marker in China’s future development,” said presenter Marcel De Meirleir of Ernst & Young. RIGHT: Lois Dougan Tretiak […]

An increasing number of companies are turning to the concept of “shared services” to lower operating expenses and gain competitive advantage. Briefly defined, shared services consolidates accounting, human resources (HR), real estate and other transactional operations to reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction. As a management technique, shared services falls into the process-oriented family of […]

Start Me Up: Phoenix, Las Vegas Rated No. 1 Cities Startups are costly, risky business. But Phoenix and Las Vegas are the U.S. locations most conducive to startups’ health, according to new research from Cambridge, Mass.-based Cognetics (www.cogonline.com) (headed by David Birch, considered “the granddaddy of gazelles”). Those two cities are the respective two top […]

Of all the management skills required of today’s corporate real estate manager, none is more elusive than the requirement that he have soothsaying skills. After all, predicting real estate space requirements is central to an organization’s ability to manage physical assets wisely and, as importantly, strategically. Real estate clairvoyance is known in professional circles as […]

You’d expect the president of the Economic Developers Association of Canada (EDAC) to be an unabashed supporter of business investment into America’s neighbor and No. 1 trading partner — and an articulate voice explaining the country’s many location advantages. And David Amos is. Amos, who is also director of economic development for the city of […]

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there,” humorist Will Rogers once observed. That says a lot about leadership, an eternally discussed but skimpily understood business success factor. When it comes to real estate leadership, though, a case study is at hand: the alliance between UnitedHealth Group […]

A new research report, IDRC’s Defining Characteristics, charts the leading real estate association’s evolution from site selection resource to business strategy group, and beyond. Organizations that resist change or cannot change will soon find themselves on the endangered species list in the business world. The forces of technology, entrepreneurship and globalization are too powerful to […]

The Johnson Controls USA Office Costs Index [See Tables One, Two, Three and Chart A for data] The Johnson Controls USA Office Occupancy Costs Index is based on a detailed model of a medium grade air-conditioned office building, which operates reasonably efficiently with no unusually high service standards or demands. The building is 160,000 rentable […]

A business cost survey is the centerpiece of a Web-based service that lets “eCities” get the word out concerning local business development opportunities. Corporate site seekers now have yet another way to access key cost-of-doing-business data in markets around the USA via the Internet. The Kosmont Cost of Doing Business Survey tm, published by Kosmont […]

Economic development groups are among those likely to participate in the Keystone State’s newly designed Web site, PA PowerPort, an Internet portal for business development. Pennsylvania is broadening its efforts to be recognized as a technologically savvy place in which to grow a business. The Keystone State’s various public-private technology partnerships and healthy business climate […]

Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Workplace Transformation: Redefining the Workplace,” IDRC Tennessee World Congress Opening General Session, Oct. 18, 1999: Bell South CEO Duane Ackerman kicked off the session with “Concrete, Cars and Cyberspace,” a case study in workplace redefinition. With many […]

If you build it, will they dot.com? Not necessarily. More accurately, if you dot.com it, you’d better build. 1999, you see, was the year in which some of the Internet’s leading lights decided that they needed big-time bricks to make their clicks work. That concrete lesson in real estate realities is part of the story […]

The Feb. 15-17 Leadership Development Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz., marked the beginning of an important new organizational initiative and membership benefit for the International Development Research Council (IDRC). Fifty-three leaders from the Executive Committee, Board of Directors, policy boards, committees and chapters took part in the program. “Leadership development is becoming integral to the strategic […]

America Online, Prince William County, Va.: The online king of clicks that swallowed Time-Warner searched nationwide before siting this $520 million, 200-employee technology center in this Northern Virginia county, which also bagged Covad Communications’ 1,000-employee technical center. Ameritrade, Fort Worth, Texas: Also part of the clicks-to-bricks brigade, Ameritrade will meet burgeoning online demand with this […]

Labor Pay vs. Consumer Income: Connecticut No. 1 in Both Cost-juggling: It’s often a major concern in locating operations, particularly the distribution facility juggle of calculating labor costs vs. the nearby market’s buying power. Connecticut, though, ranks No. 1 for both personal income per resident and average annual salary, according to the Statistical Abstract of […]