The Service Provider Edge
Savvy use of service providers is another key element in delivering strategic workplace solutions, IDRC's conference demonstrated.

One spotlighted strategy, design-build construction, is, in fact, an old one, stretching back to master-builder Frank Lloyd Wright's heyday. Even ancient artifacts, though, start looking as shiny as new pennies when they're delivering major savings and faster speed to market -- which is just what design-build methods are yielding.

In fact, design-build delivery speed was 33.5 percent faster than design-bid-build in a recent study by the Construction Industry Institute (www.construction-institute.org). Design-build construction speed was 12 percent faster, and unit costs were 6.1 percent lower.

"With design-build, you're not buying design and construction separately, but the finished project," explained Wesely-Thomas Enterprises President Carl Wesely. "The contractor has one entity as a sole source. By working together, you'll get the highest value for the lowest dollar."

State Farm embraced design-build after desperate straits forced a trial run: Annual savings of $100 million beckoned if it could get a brand-new Atlanta data center online in a year. But State Farm had no land, much less a facility or a design.

"We worked with the design-builders seven days a week for 30 weeks," explained Chris Meece, State Farm construction administrator. "We completed the project $3 million under budget and one month early. The first thing we learned is that the only way this method will work is with respect and trust."

Trust is also a key element in the Mercury Initiative Alliance (MIA) between Nortel Networks and a service provider network including Brookfield LePage Johnson Controls, CB Richard Ellis, Fischer & Co., Grubb & Ellis, Herman Miller, HOK and J.J. Barnicke. The boundary-less MIA partnership transcends outsourcing's frequent turf wars.

"Every one of us is involved in Nortel real estate strategy," says Fischer & Co. Vice President Chris Joyner. "We can no longer take a back seat and ask the client what he wants. The client expects us as a group to know what to do."

MIA seems to know. It's cut $7.7 million-plus a year from Nortel Networks' occupancy expenses.

The Future: Facilities That Think?
The future workplace, though, may make today's innovations look like child's play.

The work landscape has already been markedly changed by what Steelcase's Keane called "an Internet-based everything environment." That Net explosion is improving inadequate support for globally distributed, round-the-clock work processes, Keane explained. "Without global technology standards, some people have to carry two or three phones to allow for different communication standards. The Internet helps a lot here."

Facility operations may also get a major Net boost, Keane explained: "Instead of changing switching and wiring to change lighting, you could use Internet Protocol and just change it on the computer."

Indeed, IDRC's parley pointed toward a future workplace saturated with technology.

"We're moving into the post PC era, with a number of smaller devices that are designed for one thing instead of one big, complex device," Keane asserted. "There's a limit to how much you can carry around. So rather than one computer with one user, the model will be one person with many computers, with predictable, ubiquitous technology supporting you as you move around."

Landscape of Change, for example, envisions "intelligent buildings [that] automatically adjust temperature, lighting and ventilation to suit inhabitants' personal preferences and moods."

Technology will even create facility exteriors with significant smarts, says the report: "With computer chip technology incorporated into materials from glass to concrete, previously inanimate objects will communicate deterioration and perform functions such as changing color and texture."

Facilities will also become uncommonly flexible, says the Ballast Wiltshier report. Buildings with finite life spans (e.g., factories), for example, will be built for rapid disassembly. Updated parts will be added as needed; or, if the facility's life cycle is finished, components will be reused or recycled.

Sound farfetched? Of course. But not long ago, so, too, did something called the Internet.

And all the signs from Nashville suggest that the corner of space and strategy will continue to be a provocative, and constantly changing, address.

"Old methods of planning, controlling, allocating and supervising in a linear process have slipped away," Galbraith said.

Pooh Bear would understand.    SS