BOMA International 2008 Conference

Many people live near, work inside or have visited a high-rise or office complex. Yet few realize the amazing concert of activities and resources required to maintain and run what can be, in the case of some of the larger facilities, akin to a small city.

I am currently in Denver, Colorado at the site of this year's BOMA International Conference. Formed in 1907, The Building Owners and Managers Association represents 92 local associations throughout the United States and 12 affiliates internationally.BOMA's 16,500-plus members own or manage more than nine billion square feet of commercial properties in North America alone.

At a conference as expansive as this, one is struck immediately by the volume of resources, expertise, technologies and coordination that is necessary to keep a typical high-rise or commercial facility operational. Sprinkle in ever-present life-safety and security concerns and add a dash of nascent environmental green issues and you have a mixture that is complex, specialized and challenging.

High technology is playing an ever-increasing role in the building industry. With the advent of building tech that helps property managers deal rapidly with crisis, manage external vendors and projects and automated control systems that provide intelligent, actionable information, buildings themselves are becoming hotbeds of information. As internal systems become more and more complex, I would venture to guess that we will begin seeing a situation similar to that in corporate entities in the early 90's who moved from a "do-it-all internally" attitude with Information Technology to one that takes a more hybrid approach – integrating 3rd party remote managed services to the mix.