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-- Jack Lyne
At its best, corporate real estate is like Atlas, the mythical Greek god who bore the heavens: Top-flight real estate shoulders strategy.
Appropriately, Lucent Technologies' workplace strategy is dubbed "Project Atlas." Led by Lucent's real estate group, Project Atlas is a dramatic, five-year workplace transformation now under way for 24,000 key R&D employees located in Bell Laboratories' 12 million sq. ft. (1.1 million sq. m.) of mission-critical space. Over 10 years, the project will yield US$200 million-plus in savings. In addition, the reconfiguration will shave set-up costs for new employee work space from $2,800 to $500.
But that only partially explains why Atlas is the most recent winner of the prestigious Best Practice Workplace Award presented by the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world's preeminent corporate real estate association. Striking in its scale and long-term impact, Atlas goes beyond wedding real estate and corporate mission. It also extends the ambitious designs set out in IDRC's groundbreaking Corporate Real Estate 2000TM (CRE2000) research,
"Atlas exemplifies and goes beyond the CRE 2000 'business strategist' role," says Real Estate Vice President Tony Marano. "It anticipates business trends, monitors and measures their impacts [and] contributes to the value of the corporation as a whole, focusing on the company's mission, [not] solely on real estate."
Faster to Market
Indeed, perhaps Atlas's greatest strategic contribution lies in promoting faster product development, which often marks the difference between high-tech's masters and martyrs. Customer needs and market conditions are integrated into the early stages of product conceptualization, speeding salable products to market. As Marano explains, Atlas's workplace reconfiguration "redirects talent from pure research into product development," through a series of "planning principles":
• Zoning the workplace by interactivity, positioning highly interactive work along primary circulation routes, inter-team interactivity on secondary routes and private space in the most isolated areas.
• Creating "Caf? Forums" at main circulation nodes to facilitate social interaction and spontaneous idea development.
• Locating shared services along "Main Streets" to promote communication.
• Designing individual work areas with sliding glass doors that facilitate teamwork and reconfigurations.
• Providing "transient workstations" for visitors.
• Creating "project work rooms" for long-term teamwork.
'Execute Quickly, Thoroughly'
For real estate practitioners, though, the steps that created Project Atlas hold critical lessons.
Benchmarking triggered one key step. "Lucent's R&D community, engineers and scientists at heart did not readily accept the premise that existing conditions were inadequate," says Marano. Top management buy-in came quickly, however, after viewing some sobering benchmark data from Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Octel and Oracle. By comparison, Lucent's space per person was 20 to 30 percent higher, even though its workstations were smaller. Competitors were also beating Lucent's revenue per gross square foot.
Mandate secured, Lucent's real estate arm began mapping 30-plus focus groups' work patterns, processes and styles, while its "SWAT teams" assessed the 12.5 million sq. ft. of space in a mere 30 days.
Simultaneously, Lucent's information technology arm mounted its "Communication, Computing and Collaboration" initiative, developing pre-formatted, digitized desktop publishing systems.
The real estate-IT linkage supported Marano's idea that "workplace transformations require a systemic, holistic approach . . . considering people, organizational structures and processes, information technologies and the work setting as a system, so a change in one part is accompanied by corresponding changes in the other parts."
Ten Atlas pilot programs were implemented, each with a senior management "sponsor," Marano explains, "[ensuring that] each of the senior scientific leaders could personally engage the local community in a dialogue about the new culture and workplace." The pilots led to refinements, while also reducing change fears and creating "a groundswell of interest in the transformation," he says.
But while careful planning was a critical in Atlas's success, so was execution, which rivaled the speed of a Zeus thunderbolt.
"In today's dynamic business world, as context, problem definition and solutions continually change, slow and incomplete action spells the death of any significant initiative," Marano emphasizes." Once you have leadership's attention and commitment, execute quickly and thoroughly before its focus shifts."
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At its best, corporate real estate is like Atlas, the mythical Greek god who bore the heavens: Top-flight real estate shoulders strategy. Appropriately, Lucent Technologies’ workplace strategy is dubbed “Project Atlas.” Led by Lucent’s real estate group, Project Atlas is a dramatic, five-year workplace transformation now under way for 24,000 key R&D employees located in […]
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A Conversation with University of Arizona President Dr. Robert C. Robbins
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Merger-contemplating executive No. 1: “Can anybody stop us?” Merger-contemplating executive No. 2: “Hmmm . . . NATO?” Citigroup does things big, as boldfaced by that humorous exchange, reported during 1998’s Travelers-Citicorp merger discussions. Just how big is obvious in Tampa. “We have 9,400 employees in Florida, 2,500 in the Tampa area and 2,200 […]
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Where do real estate consultants go for their expertise before meeting with corporate real estate professionals to plot strategy? Besides drawing on their own professional credentials, many attend educational meetings of The Counselors of Real Estate, a Chicago-based association of real estate consultants. The group’s Midyear Meeting in Seattle, held April 18-21, was a good […]
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Site Selection: Congratulations on your new assignment at Cushman & Wakefield. How do you envision your role and that of the new Advisory Services unit going forward? Arnold C. Thomas: Advisory Services is a function that has been ongoing at several Cushman & Wakefield offices in the U.S. But the firm did not have an […]
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Québec snares the Canadian Competitiveness Award, and we salute Canada's top regional economic development groups.
The Mid-Atlantic is seeing an uptick in location-related activity, much of it with existing buildings rather than greenfield development.
Greater Portland is a mecca for business services firms.
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JULY 1999 SITE SELECTION EUROPE’S 1998 FACILITIES RACE • COVER PAGE • INTRODUCTION • EUROPEAN CHAMPION:THE UNITED KINGDOM • THE RUNNER-UP: FRANCE • GERMANY GRABS THIRD PLACE • BELGIUM, NO. 4 • POLAND TAKES FIFTH PLACE • IRELAND, NO. 6 • HUNGARY TAKES SEVENTH PLACE • SPAIN, NO. 8 • THE NETHERLANDS RECORD BREAKING   YEAR • […]
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In Oklahoma, the wide-ranging industry sector of professional, scientific and technical services has become a top performer.
Missouri’s bioscience and health innovation companies are leading the way to life saving research and scientific advancements.
The supermarket chain’s inexorable march north includes a $300-million investment in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Gov. Matt Bevin outlines his vision for the Kentucky economy and its people.
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From Copenhagen and Stockholm to Oslo to as far out as Helsinki, Nordic markets are bubbling towards a top. After several years of rapid growth in available space, the market tune has changed. As a result, corporate denizens are scrambling to reposition themselves to control occupancy costs, which, for the average firm, make up 20-30 […]
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Five years ago Site Selection documented how Williams Sausage’s $44 million, 200-plus-job expansion into a second manufacturing complex and new corporate office in Northwest Tennessee was enabled in part by New Markets Tax Credits (NMTCs).
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A decade ago, many U.S. site seekers thought Canada an expensive place to do business. As a result, they rarely looked north of the border when expansion plans loomed. True, Canada was a costly place to operate, compared with many stateside locations. In fact, high operating costs helped turn the country into a favorite hunting […]
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As if mergers and acquisitions weren’t keeping biopharma-sector real estate managers busy enough, the ground is shifting beneath their feet
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No longer do you necessarily have to physically be there in location searches? early stages to still be there. Leading-edge technologies are shaving precious time from sometimes lengthy business site searches, as well as facilitating more informed decisions. Here are a few examples of today?s high-tech tools: Woe unto the Web-less? It?s no surprise that […]
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Much of the US is running out of attractive, properly prepared industrial land. Twenty-five years ago, the issue of site availability for expanding companies was not usually a major concern. When a client needed a fairly conventional property of perhaps a hundred acres, there was usually a range of choices. Virtually every community or region […]
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Swiss textile machine manufacturers pick China sites; a Swiss coffee concern finds a location closer to home for a 400-job production facility
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Gov. Pritzker unveils $40 million grant program to develop megasites.
Features
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Paris-based pharmaceutical company Ipsen is moving forward with two major expansion plans with Biomeasure, its U.S.-based subsidiary. Ipsen is expanding in Milford, Mass., and is relocating its U.S. headquarters from Brisbane, Calif., to Bridgewater, N.J.
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Interstate highway access — check. Commercial airport site — check. Quick proximity to 50 percent of Florida’s population — check. Abundant and growing workforce — check. Foreign Trade Zone — check.
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From Site Selection magazine, May 1999 T O P D E A L S 1998’s Very Honorable Mentions A hot year for the world economy, 1998 saw a dizzying array of top-flight facility deals, too many to be crammed into one top 10. Here are a few other eminently worthy deals Site Selection cites […]
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From Site Selection magazine, May 1999 Championship Caliber: Site Selection‘s 1998 Top 10 Development Groups b y T I M V E N A B L E Hundreds of growing companies played the location game with skill and poise last year, capitalizing on the championship-level services of Site Selection‘s 1998 top development groups. […]
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Four reforms could help governments dial back incentives to sustainable levels.
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From Site Selection magazine, May 1999 Other Top Development Organizations: Honorable Mentions from 1998 TTaken from the many nominations received for this year’s Site Selection list of top 10 development groups, here are profiles of other worthy organizations from 1998: Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce, Bowling Green, Ky.: Played a key role in attracting […]
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When Caterpillar announced publicly last year that it was moving its corporate headquarters operations from Illinois to Texas, the world took notice.
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by Site Selection Contributors
Breakthrough Deals: New Trend-Setting Corporate Locationsb y T I M V E N A B L E Auto plants in Detroit. Financial services offices in New York City. Distribution centers in Chicago. Those cities and facility types go together like bread and butter, the result of decades of business success. But the world […]
Read MoreSite Selection Contributors
Site Selection Contributors
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From Site Selection magazine, February 1990 New Facilities 1989 | Site Selection Online ©1990 Conway Data, Inc. All rights reserved. SiteNet data is from many sources and is not warranted to be accurate or current.
In Round Rock, opportunities are found around every corner.
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The more things change the more they stay the same, goes the saying. Access to a skilled work force remains the No. 1 priority of corporate site seekers, according to a recent Site Selection survey of economic development (ED) groups and service providers. This has been the case for years, and as long as unemployment […]
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A retooled approach to business development and renewed investment into infrastructure are winning corporate facility projects in Oklahoma.
Oklahoma launches new programs to spur economic recovery across the state.
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Corporate site seekers zeroing in on the best places for new facilities evaluate competing areas against the backdrop of today’s constantly changing — and increasingly competitive — location landscape. New financial incentives, strengthened work-force training programs and enhanced World Wide Web sites are just a few of the tools communities are using to make themselves […]
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From Site Selection magazine, May 1999 C O V E R S T O R Y b y J A C K L Y N E MCI WorldCom stands poised to be the 21st century telecom prototype, having acquired all the requisite pieces, including a ton of real estate assets. But can […]
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It didn’t take long for the Bioscience Connecticut initiative to bear fruit.
A myriad of property management software is available today to handle account and reporting needs of industrial sites. One product that has been around awhile and continues to draw favorable reviews for its latest version is Skyline II. SS&C, a Windsor, Conn.-based software developer for a variety of applications, is the creator of Skyline. […]
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Real estate and corporate resources executives from several leading financial companies gathered in New York City in mid-December 1998 to discuss ways in which they are helping drive change in their organizations. Unless an organization changes, it stops growing, becomes less competitive — even non-competitive — and will be left behind by more nimble players. […]
Read MoreAn industry leader shares insights into Missouri’s unique assets for energy innovation and growth.
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The Oversized Impact of Downtown Universities
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Site Selection: Congratulations on your recent promotion to Senior Vice President, Corporate Services. How does this change your role at Charles Schwab? Parkash P. Ahuja: Thank you. As for my responsibilities, prior to this change I was responsible for corporate real estate facilities, purchasing, travel, food services and corporate records. I used to report to […]
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Projects involving DOE National Labs deliver industry-relevant innovation unfolding across the entire federal research facility portfolio.
Thousands of landfills nationwide contain mountains of methane that could be turned into energy.
Trying to make sense of the Amazon debacle in NY yields valuable lessons.
