I have attended RealComm off an on for many years; seen many promises of technology magic to come, hints of what may be possible in the future and heard about new developments across the world that would soon impact the real estate industry.  While this year’s conference was smaller due to the recession, it was much more dramatic in new technology and business practices actually being used today!  There was real content with emerging metrics produced by real practitioners with real projects this time… more than any time I have ever seen.  In some cases I was almost knocked off my chair in seeing and hearing what is going on throughout the world in real estate technology.  Jim Young and Howard Berger and their staff are to be commended for their perseverance, now beginning to pay off with outstanding results!

Green Technology… Smart Buildings… Networked Portfolios… Automated Systems… Connected Buildings… Wireless Controls… Real Time Energy Management… and believe it or not, the Government (GSA and others) leading the charge!

Kevin Kampschroer and Larry Melton from the GSA demonstrated breathtaking advances in the convergence of Energy, IT and Building Management Systems throughout their 350 million SF portfolio, establishing the standards and new business processes and building intelligence that the world is starting to follow.

IBM is taking this out to the world through their Smart Building and Smart City initiatives.

Tridium and Pacific Controls show how it is possible to manage energy utilization wirelessly across hundreds of networked buildings and deploy almost in the blink of an eye.

Boston Properties and many others demonstrated several active projects, sometimes with hundreds of buildings, now up and running and producing results, showing the ROI today.

Yet unfortunately, there was a consensus that many in the real estate and property management industry, especially in the U.S., are still lagging in their ability and willingness to understand and engage these emerging technologies – especially as others are now taking the lead in such real world deployments as we speak.  

But as technologists are now changing their DNA by adding business intelligence and management skills to their resumes, the DNA of the brokers and CRE’s must also now change to add technology intelligence to their skill set if they are to survive.

NAI Global is fortunate to have an advanced technology based infrastructure to provide our brokers and corporate service providers with the tools, training, and technology understanding for providing intelligent guidance to our clients across the world.

-Warren Bailey

Warren Bailey is Vice President of Corporate Technology at NAI Global.