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IDRC Best Practice AwardFrankly, most companies would die for problems like Capital One Financial's (www.capital1.com): five straight years of 20 percent-plus earnings growth and a spot in Fortune's "100 Best Places to Work."
But Capital One's blistering growth had burned a gaping hole in its corporate real estate (CRE) strategy. Like some steroid-fueled bullfrog, the Signet Bank spin-off had catapulted from 1994's 10 Richmond,-Va. based facilities, 3,560 employees and 923,000 sq. ft. (83,070 sq. m.) of space to 48 U.S. and UK facilities, 14,680 employees and 3.1 million sq. ft. (279,000 sq. m.).


"Our headcount growth was much higher than our ability to add space," says Bill Yontz, vice president for CRE. Hyper-growth, in fact, had forced Capital One to turn conference and vending space into offices, Yontz says. And as employee density rose, workplace satisfaction ratings plummeted.


Clearly, a serious situation. And one with a rebound so remarkable that Capital One CRE, along with service provider Jones Lang LaSalle (www.joneslanglasalle.com), won the coveted 1999 Best Practices Award for Strategy from the International Development Research Council (IDRC).


"What we jointly developed is a long-term strategy that supports Capital One's overall business objectives and dramatic growth, creating a working model for future real estate decision-making within a strategic framework," explains Richard McBlaine, CEO of Jones Lang LaSalle's Global Consulting group.


Changing Management's Mindset

The portfolio management model has proved to be so strategic, in fact, that its details remain confidential. But the CRE/JLL team shared its methodology and how it's changed Falls Church, Va.-based Capital One.
And change runs from the top. Critically, the model altered the existing mindset of Capital One's top management, who'd considered real estate merely a "just-in-time" resource. Predictably, that reactionary posture had created a damaging disconnect between business objectives and CRE decisions.


The first step in creating the model to fuse CRE and overall strategy was a quiet one: The CRE/JLL team gathered data on what senior management considered business drivers, researched other fast-growth firms' coping strategies, and reviewed existing real estate practices.


"Because we were simultaneously working with Capital One to acquire space, our strategy team gained a real-time insight into existing real estate processes," says McBlaine.


Defining Preferred Solutions

Then came the rigorous, matrix-driven process of fleshing out the model.


First, the CRE/JLL team categorized the portfolio by risk and use. That led to expanding the three existing occupancy categories to five: "core office," "core call center," "core special purpose," "non-core office" and "non-core call center." Then each category was rated as "high," "medium" or "low" in its ability to satisfy specific business objectives like "providing sufficient capacity for future growth."


The team's next step was to pinpoint each occupancy category's "primary real estate characteristics" in attaining business objectives. For future growth capacity, for example, the characteristic was "deal structure," including "initial occupancy size relative to additional adjacent real estate supply" and "quality and quantity of growth options."


That led to perhaps the model's most powerful matrix, which defined each occupancy category's "preferred real estate solutions" -- even including photographic examples and recommendations for deal structure and language.


CRE First, Finance Second

Moreover, the model radically redefined the CRE-finance linkage: It stipulated that CRE's identification of optimal properties would precede identification of optimal financing methods. In addition, the model created a set of "pre-approved financing alternatives," specifying financial criteria weightings for each occupancy type.
And that was only part of the model's success in integrating Corporate Infrastructure ResourcesTM, an area in which IDRC has been a trailblazer. All major players in Capital One workplace management -- real estate, finance, human resources, information technology and business units -- now coordinate their efforts. Monthly "capacity planning sessions," for example, pinpoint process trigger dates for timely new-space delivery.


Few CRE strategies have such far-reaching impact, not only mitigating current workplace woes, but also embedding a footprint in the future.


Says Yontz, "We've created a corporate real estate play-book, adopting company-wide business practices and decision-making processes that will guide all of our future real estate decisions."

Site Selection


-- Jack Lyne












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Deal-Making, Texas-Style

A compelling session at IEDC's annual conference sheds light on projects, talent and the vision to develop both.

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Clean Numbers

A trio of studies attempts to put some flesh on the bones of clean-energy claims in North Carolina.

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Features

The UnitedHealth Alliance: Leadership Writ Large

“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 […]

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Michigan Drives For First Place In Site Readiness

Consumers Energy teams up with MEDC and Walbridge to prepare shovel-ready sites.

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Born Leader

With a seemingly endless string of disasters plaguing the world in the last year, most notably the massive earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan, images of the devastating floods that swept across much of Queensland, Australia, have faded from memory for most not directly affected.

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Small Molecules, Big World:

A Conversation with Cambrex CEO Thomas Loewald

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Employee Retention Insights from Work Institute

The last two years may be one of the most tumultuous times in the U.S. workforce due to the extraordinary influence the global coronavirus pandemic had on the workplace.

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Food’s Future

Food's Future: A growing number of states want evidence of results to drive decisions about tax incentives for economic development.

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Features

New Research Puts IDRC’s Past, Current and Future Value in Perspective

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 […]

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Slow Burn

Thousands of landfills nationwide contain mountains of methane that could be turned into energy.

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Qatar Has Space to Innovate

We explore the $45 billion Lusail City, new incentives for AI and tech in Saudi Arabia, and the massive Tasreef Project in Dubai.

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CRE EDUCATION: Making the Grade

Real estate education programs are as varied as the deals they teach you to make. The Urban Land Institute’s Directory of Real Estate Development and Related Education Programs is currently in its ninth edition, and includes 60 programs in the United States and abroad. Of that sample, only a handful mention corporate real estate as […]

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Points in Transition

It’s game on in Lebanon, Indiana.

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BOMA to Bush: Act Now on Energy Crisis

W ASHINGTON — It didn’t take long for President Bush to face his first “crisis” in the Oval Office — how to deal with California’s widespread energy shortages.         One group that hopes Bush acts quickly is the Building Owners and Managers Assoc. International (BOMA), the nation’s largest lobbying organization for corporate […]

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Features

Site Selection Debuts Leading Occupancy Costs Index

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 […]

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How the Construction Trades Responded to COVID-19

Deemed ‘essential,’ the business of building America continues during the pandemic.

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Fear of Heights

It was no accident that Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management, delivered keynote remarks on climate change at the United Nations’ Investor Summit on Climate Risk and Energy Solutions in New York in January.

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LAND HO!

Iowa launches a certified sites program that’s landing big projects.

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NORTH AMERICAN REPORTS

NORTH AMERICAN REPORTS From Site Selection magazine, September 2007   The Maine Thing Freightliner Gets What It Needs in Coahuila   E by ADAM BRUNS adam.bruns bounce@conway.com  arly this summer, Chrysler Group announced three new investments in North America to support production of its Phoenix V-6 engine. While the new plants in Trenton, Mich., and […]

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GCL-Poly Rolls On

A Hong Kong-based solar manufacturing and power company ramps up at record speed to reach the world’s markets at the right time.

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Features

eCities Reduce Legwork in Comparing Cost

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 […]

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PLASTICS AND CHEMICALS

he U.S. and Canadian plastics industry was generally flat in 2003. Resin sales and production each fell by half a percent, according to figures from the American Plastics Council (APC).       End-use manufacturers continue their drift to East Asia and other low-cost regions with their suppliers often tagging along. This continues a trend […]

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In The (Free Economic) Zone? Probably.

Much of South Korea is a free economic zone, if going right to China isn’t in the cards.

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Grape Expe ctations

The Wine Industry is full bodied and growing by the day.

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Kentucky Puts Your Project on the Fast Track

When Danimer Scientific needed a location for its biodegradable bioplastics business in the Eastern U.S., it chose Winchester, Kentucky, for a major investment.

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Saskatchewan BioSciences Industry Overview: Building on Firm Foundations

Change and uncertainty are a reality these days, but in the case of Saskatchewan biosciences, the only uncertainty is whether we can grow fast enough to take full advantage of opportunities.

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