Owners of multi-unit residential and commercial offices spaces are constantly being pressured by the "Green" industry to reduce (electric, gas, water) resource consumption. However, as owners typically pass these costs on to tenants; a reduction in these cost have no significant impact on the owner's profits or revenues. Even with 100's of millions of dollars of incentive available across the nation, owners have no financial motivation to make investments in resource reduction.
The industry needs a "win-win-win" solution. (A win for the environment - a win for the tenant's by giving them extra functionality - a win for the owner by increasing their revenue/profit)
Fortunately the technologies are available which provide these benefits.
For the owners, let's give them something tangible & marketable. A real estate product, which could be offered to tenants that would give the tenants a means to lower resource consumption, support mobility, and allow them to continually optimize the environments they lease. Let's have that same solution reduce the owners operational cost and increase the owner's responsiveness to their tenants.
For the tenants, let's offer to them environments where their employees do not have to run outside or near windows to get signal for their smart phones. Let's proactively deliver information to tenants, letting them know how many resources they are consuming in real time, not just when they open a bill at the end of the month. Let's surprise the tenants by informing them that something in broken before they know it is.
Today we can do all of this if we break away for the industry "norms" for technology. Property owner's can differentiate their facilities by offering a proactively managed enhanced "core and shell", based on global standards, not industry standards. Their facilities can support mobility, provide self help tools for managing tenant environments, and can give detailed resource consumption information to tenants that allow them to manage their costs.
Owners can invest in multi-tasking technologies which simultaneously support tenants and operations all while increasing visibility for the owners.
Owners are more likely to invest to grow/protect occupancy; they see the value in offering a more functional product at a completive rate. With the right approach a nominal per s/f investment can ROI in less than 3 years.
The owners get more revenue, tenants get a better environment, and resource consumption gets reduced, everyone wins.
Craig Getchell is the owner of Getchell Consulting and is principal/co-founder of Area Solutions, Portsmouth, NH.