hen a profession’s top achievers stake out a position of leadership through their actions, others soon follow.
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That’s exactly what happened three years ago this month when about 50 corporate real estate executives organized themselves into the Industrial Asset Management Council.
Today, some 350 corporate real estate executives, economic developers and commercial real estate service providers belong to IAMC. The group — which focuses its core program content and other deliverables on the needs of manufacturing executives — has convened six times in national forums to discuss their craft and share ideas on how to make it better.
This high-quality networking and professional education culminated March 19-23 in Charleston, S.C., with the highest rated IAMC Professional Forum to date, as 312 registered attendees gave the conference an overall rating of 86 out of 100 points.
More telling than the evaluation scores, however, are the individual testimonials of industry leaders who came away from Charleston with a newfound appreciation for IAMC.
Wayne Young, senior real estate negotiator at Sprint, said, “At the Charleston Forum, I found that you are able to interact and converse with fellow active members one-on-one without being pressured. Having the associates present is valuable as well. However, the interaction with other actives — the ability to bounce ideas off of them and find out what other people are doing — is going to positively affect my job in the long run.”
Pete Garra, director of real estate for The BOC Group, said, “IAMC is the only professional real estate organization that offers high-quality educational programs, seminars, focused workshops and peer-to-peer roundtable discussions in a manageable, controlled venue. The smaller size and select nature of IAMC’s membership at the Forums results in outstanding educational effectiveness as well as greater networking and relationship-building opportunities.”
Young and Garra have plenty of company. The organization has attracted the top real estate officers of Pfizer, Intel, Chevron-Texaco, Campbell’s Soup, BASF, Hallmark Cards, Weyerhaeuser, Unisys, Honeywell, CSX, Service Master, Federal Express, United Parcel Service and many other large industrial companies.
The members of IAMC explain why they join and why they keep coming back to IAMC’s two national Professional Forums each year. They like the niche content that hones in on the challenges facing manufacturing portfolio managers. They appreciate the small-group networking facilitated by small conferences in intimate, high-quality settings. And they enjoy learning the best practices of industry peers.
The typical active member of IAMC manages the real estate of a company with $23 billion in assets and annual revenues of $7.3 billion. The average member company has 108,000 employees and conducts 135 real estate transactions every year.
IAMC helps these professionals meet strategic and everyday challenges by remaining committed to the organization’s vision: “IAMC is the world’s leading industrial corporate real estate organization of high-level professionals committed to implementing the best strategies for success in corporate operations.”
IAMC fulfills this vision by adhering to its stated values:
- We are open-minded, flexible and innovative.
- We are an inclusive, collaborative, consistent organization.
- We lead and operate with a strong focus on fiscal integrity and responsibility.
- We improve knowledge and learning by relying first on member expertise.
- We conduct ourselves with the highest levels of honesty, integrity, ethics and trust.
- We focus first on the professional needs of members and exceed customer expectation.
These values led IAMC to create programs to meet the needs of its members: a three-year research program that produces industry-leading research reports; professional educational curriculum that draws upon the best resources in the field; Leadership Development Seminars that award graduates with a Fellow designation; premium communications tools including Site Selection magazine, the IAMC Dispatch newsletter, IAMC Notes and the IAMC.org Web portal; an innovative Regions Program that brings the value of the national association to the local level; and other programs.
Perhaps that’s why one of our associate members recently said, “I highly recommend this group to anyone who’s serious about their craft.” 
Ron Starner is interim executive director of IAMC.