BOMA Conference in Boston - Day One and Day Two Recap

Articles provided by BOMA International

BOOM. BOMA Is Back Together Again!

This was BOMA International’s first in-person annual conference in over two years! There was so much in store, from world-class education sessions to a keynote session with Doris Kearns Goodwin. The days were filled with sharing best practices at meetings, learning sessions with speakers, and connecting with colleagues.

Watch our Day One Video Recap

Watch our Day Two Video Recap

Return to Office
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed everything, but what can we expect in its latter stages? People are likely to come back to the office, but the way that the office looks and functions will change significantly, according to Gensler’s Bob Peck, principal and global government and defense practice area leader, and Cheryl Duvall, regional consulting practice area leader.

Peck and Duvall served as speakers for a Thursday morning session at the 2021 BOMA International Conference & Expo, notably BOMA’s first in-person conference since 2019. Researching the future of the workplace is at the core of Gensler’s mission, Peck said. The firm has been asking questions about how and where people want to work in a post-pandemic future since April 2020, and they uncovered some interesting insights that could influence the way we manage offices. Their research revealed that:

• Over half of workers would prefer a hybrid work model. However, across the countries surveyed by Gensler, the U.S. leads the world in both employees who prefer remote work only and those who want to work in the office full-time. You need to allocate space accordingly.
• Remote work has robbed junior staff of mentoring opportunities. “I believe this is one of the greatest losses during the pandemic,” said Duvall. “You have to be far more intentional about it because it can’t just happen as you walk to the conference room anymore.”
• Younger generations have a broader conception of the office’s value. Different generations go to the office for different things, Duvall explained. Gen Z respondents to Gensler’s surveys were more likely to rate maximizing individual productivity as a reason they work in the office, and they were also the only generation ranking visibility for promotion in their top 10 purposes the office serves. Older workers are likely to note access to specific spaces, materials or resources.
  

Walk the Walk with Your Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategy
 One of the first education sessions on Thursday at BOMA 2021 focused on the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the commercial real estate industry and both the moral and business benefits that accompany it.

“DEI is, of course, the right thing to do,” said the leader of the interactive session, Portia Mount, who is Trane Technologies’ vice president of marketing for commercial HVAC in the Americas. “And there are compelling business reasons why we should be doing it as well.”

These include driving employee performance and attracting the best and brightest new talent to the organization. According to a 2018 Deloitte report, organizations with an inclusive culture are twice as likely to meet or exceed financial targets and eight times more likely to achieve better business outcomes.

Mount also shared some of the DEI strategies that Trane is currently implementing, like employee resource groups (ERGs), voluntary and employee-led groups that help foster more inclusive workplaces and can also be valuable for talent recruitment. Mount is the global co-chair for Trane’s ERG for women. ERGs can be created along various categories of inclusion.

Mount also highlighted five steps that organizations can take on their DEI journey:

1. Nurture an inclusive culture. Can people bring their best selves to work every day? Mount received a round of applause from attendees for her words of advice on how to be a good ally: “When you see a microaggression or racial aggression happening, you say something. You say something in the moment,” she said.

2. Hold leaders accountable for achieving diversity, equity and inclusion goals. Mount revealed that this is Trane’s first year where engagement and commitment to DEI appears in its leadership performance reviews, meaning compensation is tied to it.

3. Achieve a diverse workforce representation that is reflective of our communities.

4. Build social impact through community partnerships and contributions that create opportunity for all.

5. Lead and influence suppliers, customers and channel partners to prioritize diversity, equity and inclusion.

“This is a journey—it is not a single point in time; it’s not a destination,” she said. “There isn’t really a right or wrong way to do it, but there are a lot of best practices. If we can learn from those, we might be able to avoid some of the mistakes we’ve made along the way.”
 

Why the Resilience Conversation Is Crucial
With storms that seem to keep getting worse and more frequent and temperatures that grow more intense, the conversation about climate resilience is here—and not a moment too soon. It’s time to move that conversation past using insurance to protect our buildings from extreme events and tackle the real work of how buildings can mitigate risks, said Breana Wheeler, director of operations for BRE, at a Thursday morning education session at BOMA 2021.

“We’re looking at the impacts [of extreme weather] at a scale we’re not ready for,” Wheeler said. “We’ve had a stable climate for the last 500 to 600 years, and we’ve built our world around that.” But significant change is coming, she added.

The world’s biggest real estate investors are increasingly asking questions about sustainability, resilience and risk mitigation at a level that was unheard of even five years ago, Wheeler said: “Disclosures are getting longer and more detailed. They want specifics.”

Panelists Rielle Green, an energy and sustainability manager for CBRE, and Warren Loy, who oversees asset management for Lendlease’s development assets, discussed how they integrated resilience planning into their properties. Lendlease, for example, modeled four scenarios to test and frame business strategies to build resilience to climate-related risks and opportunities.

“We’ve integrated this into our corporate risk framework and into our investment and development process,” Loy explained. “If we’re looking at a potential acquisition or a spot we think makes sense to develop, we’re ringing in climate risk assessment early in the process.”

This assessment includes the likelihood of risk, the impact of climate-related risk events, risk priorities and risk management strategies, ensuring resilience is part of the entire lifecycle of the acquisition and development process.

Green also conducted risk assessments for the CBRE property she oversees and developed a resilience checklist for future incidents. “It focuses on what existing features are at the building,” she said. “We ran through a number of items on this list that helped us identify specific entry points within the building, as well as areas that we really would need to protect.”

Buildings play a critical role in resilience, Wheeler told the audience—not just for themselves, but for their neighborhoods as well. Buildings can sometimes exacerbate problems around resilience—for example, when the way a structure is built pushes flooding onto other properties—but they also can be a real asset to communities in times of crisis, such as when buildings open their lobbies to serve as cooling centers on especially hot days. Community-minded actions like this are part of creating a more resilient community.

“Assets can be part of this solution, and that’s a critical part of resilience,” Wheeler said. “If the assets next door are not protected, what happens to the economy? Who’s coming back even if your building is fine? Everybody can play a part.”


Scholarship Invests in Tomorrow’s Property Management Leaders
The seven recipients of this year’s J. Michael Coleman Scholarship for emerging professionals were honored at the Thursday General Session at BOMA 2021. This scholarship allows up-and-coming property management professionals to attend the conference free of charge. Coleman, who passed away in 2020, spent more than 30 years with Allied Barton Security (now Allied Universal, a Cornerstone Partner). He was an active member of BOMA/Philadelphia, a BOMA Fellow and a beloved colleague.

The scholarship recipients are: Gina Marie Foxhoven, BOMA/Oklahoma City; Klark Critten, BOMA/Kansas City; Gillian Downing, BOMA/Philadelphia; Amanda Freche, BOMA/Austin; Jamie Peterson, BOMA/Seattle-King County; Madeline Powers, BOMA/Austin; and Miranda Sharpe, BOMA/Northwest Arkansas.

Give Back to the BOMA 2021 Host City
Thursday morning, Shelby Christensen, BOMA International’s 2020-2021 chair and CEO, highlighted the philanthropic event that BOMA International’s Community Service Committee is sponsoring, in partnership with BOMA/Boston, to give back to the local community. At the conference this year, the committee raised $10,000 for Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Boston’s foremost agency providing life-changing services and support for at-risk young adults.

History—and Leadership—Lessons with Keynote Speaker Doris Kearns Goodwin
Before the closing of the Thursday General Session, attendees heard a history-filled keynote from presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin. Her seven hit books include the critically acclaimed Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, which Steven Spielberg adapted for his Oscar-winning film Lincoln.

Goodwin, who earned a Ph.D. in government at Harvard University, also worked under U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson as a White House Fellow and later assisted him in writing his memoirs. Goodwin is also a Bay Stater (and she was quick to make her MLB loyalty known during her BOMA address—she’s been a season ticket holder for the Boston Red Sox for nearly 40 years).

The majority of her keynote focused on the trials and triumphs of four presidents—Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson—and how their stories hold a special meaning as we continue to face difficult times that include “a pandemic, an economic fallout, a renewed protest for racial justice and worries about the fragility of our democracy.”

“It seems everywhere I go, because I’m a historian, people will ask me, ‘Are these the worst of times?’” Goodwin said in her address. “And the reassuring answer that history provides is, ‘No, these are not the worst of times.’ We can find worse ones, I promise you. History provides perspective, and history provides hope.”

Goodwin shared colorful, sometimes harrowing, stories of the four former U.S. presidents she’s written about, all illustrating important leadership traits that still apply today, including traits property professionals can use in navigating these uncertain times. These traits include the ability to grow through adversity; striking a balance between realism and optimism; controlling negative emotions in times of stress; being accessible; managing schedules for time to think, replenish energy and relax; and turning ambition for oneself into ambition for the greater good.

Another presidential trait Goodwin shared was the self-confidence to surround themselves with people whose strengths could compensate for their weaknesses. One story she told that received a raucous applause from the audience: Eleanor Roosevelt, Goodwin said, was the first First Lady to hold weekly press conferences, and she made a rule that only female reporters could attend them.

“All over the country, stuffy publishers had to hire their first female reporter,” she said. “An entire generation got their jobs simply because of Eleanor Roosevelt.” Leadership can be transformational, especially when innovation and ingenuity drive real change.
 
Out and About in the Expo
Industrial real estate is one of the fastest-growing sectors in commercial real estate. For the first time ever at the BOMA International Expo, a select group of vendors shared solutions aimed at the industrial sector. These exhibitors offer everything from a safety device that allows property managers to lock or unlock roof hatches from the safety of the ground to reduce the risk of falls to a web-based roof asset management tool that tracks client roof system data and activity.