CoreNet Global, has selected ten finalists for the H. Bruce Russell Innovator's Awards. Each year these awards recognize excellence in sustainable leadership, economic development leadership and corporate real estate workplace issues.
The ten finalists, chosen from a field of more than 70 nominations, presented their innovations before a panel of senior corporate real estate professionals and leading academics at Harvard University, August 6-7th. CoreNet Global will reveal the winners at the CoreNet Global Summit in Orlando, November 9-11th.
For the past eight years, CoreNet Global has recognized innovations from those companies and organizations that have discovered, experimented, developed, instituted and adopted new products, processes and organizational strategy that turned into commercial success.
"Now in our ninth year of honoring corporate real estate's top innovators, we continue to see entries that deliver an unprecedented array of new thinking and implementation," said Dr. Prentice Knight, CEO, CoreNet Global.
The Innovator's Award finalists, listed in alphabetical order, are:
*Cushman & Wakefield - Discovery Communications Platinum LEED Certification
Obtaining a Platinum LEED Certification for Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, MD was a major organizational objective of Discovery, whose policy is to lead by example in adopting sustainability practices. C&W delivered this goal for its client.
*Ford Land - Fairlane Green
Fairlane Green serves a community need while being economically viable and environmentally responsible. The project converted a brownfield site into a productive new development that is 60% less dense than traditional retail centers and has earned LEED Gold certification. Fairlane Green also demonstrates innovative geotechnical engineering solutions to ensure the integrity of the landfill while accommodating the new construction.
*Gensler / Hewlett-Packard - HP Workplace Transformation Global Design Guidelines
Hewlett-Packard's new guideline articulates a forward thinking, global workplace proposition with a positive triple bottom line effect. Complexities this guideline tackles include changing attitudes towards work and work styles; tactics for the vast global variation in building types, project scale and fit out approaches; incorporation of the historically disparate elements of sustainability, brand, technology, mobility and services into a truly holistic workplace system.
*Herman Miller, Inc. / Hewlett-Packard - Space Utilization Service - Reliable Measurement of Workspace Utilization
The Space Utilization Service involves three areas of innovation: connection of workplace use data to transformational thinking about workplace strategy; harnessing of wireless technology to capture workplace utilization data and the unique and creative partnership between HP and Herman Miller. The Space Utilization Service provides reliable data to analyze worker type and space usage patterns towards discovery of more efficient occupancy alternatives.
*Jones Lang LaSalle / Motorola- Motorola iWork Program Supported by JLL iPlan Tool
Motorola CRE, IT and HR collaborated on iWork, a program to position its workplace as a benefit in terms of CRE dollar savings, flexibility and space utilization; employee productivity, satisfaction and talent retention; and image enhancing by virtue of "living" its products. iWork is enabled by JLL's iPlan software tool that turns occupancy data into RE solutions by generating automated work profiles for individuals and business units.
*San Antonio Economic Development Foundation / City of Windcrest - Partners in Innovation - Rackspace Project
Rackspace, a global web hosting company, needed to expand its facility after growing from a few hundred employees to 1,800 locally. In 2007, the city of Windcrest identified a vacant, 1.2 million s/f shopping mall that, if redesigned appropriately, could house more than 6,000 employees. Redevelopment of the shopping mall into an IT headquarters, however, required unique utility and design needs. The city of Windcrest, in partnership with the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation (EDF), worked to secure additional partners, and present a real estate solution.
*Shell Oil Co. - Holistic Solution Balancing Global and Local Business Workplace Needs
ShellWORKS leverages workplace research and practices in sustainable development, business alignment, technology integration, mobility and collaboration. ShellWORKS is holistic, encompassing site selection, workplace design and operation. ShellWORKS contributes success factors to the business: fostering enterprise first behaviors, enhancing employee value proposition, financial performance and acting as a culture change catalyst.
*University of Arizona - Global Advantage - An International Business Development Network
Global Advantage is an international network of regions working to develop knowledge based global economies. The network consists of links between industry, universities, research parks and institutions, capital networks and economic development organizations. The program objective is to promote internationalization leading to economic growth in high tech sectors.
*VFA, Inc. - Transforming Corporate Real Estate Operation into a Core Strategic Function
To manage their real properties around the globe, Deutsche Bank created a centralized real estate function (CRES). The CRES systems' overall objectives included initiating strategic, globally-consistent corporate real estate planning, creating data-supported assessment and investment strategies, providing cost transparency for informed decision making, providing accurate reporting to better manage risk and enabling a coordinated approach for strategic planning and facilities services.
*Workstage, LLC - Real Estate Modeling: Impact of Real Estate Decisions on Business Results
With the fast paced nature of today's business climate and antiquated ways to analyze the data, Workstage sought out a better way to gauge the impact of those decisions. The solution was to develop an interactive, web-based tool that pulls from years of data Workstage and its partners have collected as well as current facts from the U.S. Dept. of Energy, U.S. Dept. of Labor and the RS Means Index. Workstage RE (patent-pending) allows corporations to define their business drivers and then analyze the impact of their real estate decisions over multiple scenarios.
UGL Equis, Gensler and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce will sponsor the Innovator's Awards.