Conference Sessions

The impacts associated with a changing climate are increasingly visible to organizations and communities creating increased economic, social, health, and environmental disparities. Resilience Hubs provide opportunities to address root causes of disproportionate exposure and sensitivity to climate impacts and enhance communities’ capacity to adapt. What are Resilience Hubs? Why are they important? What is the Facility Manager's Role in creating and maintaining these hubs? This engaging session will discuss the components of a resilience hub and an FM's critical role in the development and operations of a hub. The session will also include best practices, innovations for power resilience, and case studies for implementation and funding.

We all know that a comprehensive written Business Continuity plan is an essential part of your firm’s Business Continuity program. Is your current plan gathering dust on a shelf? Are you struggling to put together a written plan that not only prepares your organization in the event of a disaster, but also meets client compliance and audit requirements, RFP guidelines, regulatory requirements and industry standards that have changed the playing field for Business Continuity in the face of a global pandemic? If so, then this session is for you. This session provides valuable information to any size business. Work through a check list of key components that should be a part of every written Business Continuity plan. Use the checklist to assess and revise your company's current plan.

Both COVID-19 and Sandy Hook taught us that crisis plans require crisis communications with internal and external audiences; yet most employers have not planned, trained, drilled or exercised these important procedures and systems (or the people who run them) for emergency, disaster recovery, business continuity, pandemic or crisis media plans. This session presents case histories that focus on the tactical and strategic communications that are required by law, mandated by standards and best practices, as well those that can save your job when an emergency strikes. Recognize how a lack of crisis communications planning gets personnel hurt reputations damaged. Learn how to make plans far more effective.

This year has been filled with challenges, innovation and many new insights for FM and HR professionals. Join us for a compelling session as two courageous organizations (Okta and HealthEquity) share how they have leveraged a crisis to re-imagine the way they work, evolve the culture and transform the workplace. Both organizations will share their unique and innovative workplace strategy, the evolution of the employee experience, what they’ve learned, and how they’ll measure success. Bonus Feature: Since our speakers represent diverse expertise in HR, FM, and Strategy, we promise you a holistic perspective that will inspire all.

You won’t want to miss this!

Digital transformation in FM requires collaboration between internal departments and external service providers and software developers to inform business analytics and business intelligence. In this session you will learn how to:

• Use data integration to empower your decision making
• Build the bridge from smart buildings to supply chain
• Develop strategies to overcome the fear factor to achieve digital transformation

It's October 2021, and the hybrid workplace is happening! Explore ideas about how technology and flexibility are driving the effectiveness of the core human centered focus on the new hybrid workplace. Practice your slam-dance moves!

Chances are that while you read this, an unexpected disaster, like your facility being hacked, is causing a facility manager stress and confusion. Are the facilities leaders prepared to handle it? Will they be able to recover? Disasters of every shape, size, look and feel happen all the time, affecting businesses, people's jobs, lives and families.This session has been designed to put you in the throes of a real-life disaster situation, as it unfolds. You will make the critical decisions any facility manager will have to make and deal with the consequences of those decisions! After you've finished, you'll understand the importance of advance disaster planning, effective communication protocols, and understanding the inherent risks in your facilities.Never be caught unprepared again!

Join a thought-provoking, interactive discussion on how IBM has developed its Experience Program. Driven by employee sentiment data and guided by an Experience Counsel, IBM developed an industry-leading workplace to support business and cultural transformation post COVID.

In a time of unprecedented uncertainty for real estate decision-makers, as a CRE leader, how do you know what will really work, and where to invest? In this session you will learn how to replace conjecture and subjectivity with an evidence-based, data-driven approach to measure and align the drivers of employee’s workplace experience with operational investments.

Also hear how Cushman & Wakefield’s Experience per Square Foot™ (XSF) data, avoids the pitfall of investing and servicing the built environment without the data to back decisions. XSF insight from 125,000+ occupiers and 5 million+ data points since COVID debunks many common myths around workplace experience, using statistical analysis to shift the subjective nature of workplace experience and employee engagement to one that is quantifiable, diagnosed and predicted.

As the world begins recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, widespread agreement has emerged that the future of work is the hybrid workplace. Recent research shows more than 70% of employees prefer remote or hybrid work and interestingly, more than 80% of employers. When writing the opening chapter on the hybrid workplace for the new book, Work on the Move 3, Michael Schley, co-editor and contributing author, did extensive research on the implications of the hybrid workplace. What are the factors driving it, what is the role of the office in the future and what are the management practices that must be considered? Indeed, do companies even need office space and if so, how does that office space need to be repurposed to support effective work in the future. Join Michael as he shares useful guidance on how workplace managers can and should lead this major transformation in how work is done in the twenty-first century.

Key Takeaways

· Understand how current trends in working will transform the future workplace.

· Discover 5 reasons why businesses will still need office space.

· Review the 3 key aspects of the hybrid workplace as organizations begin to blend the best of office and remote work.

· Learn tips on how to implement a hybrid workplace successfully.

"Work on the Move 3" (WOTM3) is the third in a series of books published by the IFMA Foundation, which focuses on the evolving world of work, workplace strategy and the intersection of People, Technology and Workplaces. WOTM3 explores the expanding role of facility management and the leadership challenges/opportunities associated with delivering effective workplaces post-pandemic. Join several of the contributing authors in discussing the new hybrid workplace, design for the post-pandemic workplace, sustainability and planetary health, and our growing dependence on technology to deliver workplaces where people can perform at their best, every day, wherever they are. All of these perspectives are woven together with emphasis on safety, health, well-being, diversity and inclusion.

Facility management and workplace leaders have always been interested in pursuing the best strategies for the future of work. Now, after more than a year and a half managing the built environment through a pandemic and the development of a hybrid workplace approach, what have FM practitioners learned and how are they preparing for what comes next? With the return to offices well under way, theories about what the future workplace would look like and how FMs would support employees have been plentiful, but have real-world human experiences matched our expectations? We knew that workplace leaders would face unexpected challenges moving their teams forward in a hybrid working model, so let's find out what experienced FM professionals have been doing to manage their facilities and meet the needs of their workforce in the months and years to come. Host Mike Petrusky will explore these questions: What have we learned in 2021 and what does next year look like for FM leaders? What is the role of trust and transparency in hybrid working?  How do we create spaces to bring people together and meet their needs? What is the role of technology to enable mobility, collaboration and getting work done? Change management has always been a strength for FM, but how does it apply today? How can we deliver the right support services when each individual has unique expectations? Is it possible to create an equitable employee experience for all in this new frontier?

How does your pay compare with other facility professionals' pay in your region? What are the top perks provided by employers? How does your facility maintenance staffing or janitorial cost line up with industry averages? This information-packed presentation will present the results of IFMA RBI's latest research projects. All attendees will receive a free white paper summary of the presentations and latest data.

Covid-19 served as a catalyst for helping building owners and operators see more clearly what they should have been doing all along. Facilities which already had a handle on their data and building systems were able to pivot and thrive, while other facilities struggled.

This interactive discussion will focus on how you can optimize for today, while preparing for whatever tomorrow brings. It will include topics like data visualization, digital twin, annual technology planning, and more. Actual use cases will be discussed and your questions are welcome!

While there may be light at the end of the tunnel with getting back to the office becoming a reality rather than future thought, the journey back that now must accommodate the employees who work both from the office and from home requires both AV and IT leaders to think out of the box when it comes to what comes next. Not every employee, nor every space, is simply served with the use of a laptop. Moderated by AVIXA, this expert panel led by leaders at Midwich and WeWork will deep dive into the solutions that will bring hybrid employees into the new age. Topics include: The audiovisual solutions that ensure equity among employees both in the office and at home; how to create plug-and-play shared spaces that take away pre-meeting inefficiencies; and the unique technical needs of the many personas that make up your workforce.

Join ISSA and GBAC as we uncover the value of clean with the current expectations of your community. We will take a dive into three critical components that will help define your success for the demands you endure.

1. Continuous Improvement Planning
2. Risk Assessments
3. Audits and Inspections

Recent events have made us aware of the need for a robust quality program; what was once acceptable may no longer meet expectations. Does your quality program have the capability to meet those changing expectations? Join us for a panel discussion featuring Toyota as we review the major components of a robust quality program with real-life examples. Topics include: Building a robust quality program to withstand adversity; how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the overall workspace (safety is more than PPE); making people feel safe; identifying and managing change; cleaning and maintenance; and adapting the people, processes and technology. Once you have your program in place, are you verifying it's working?

Inspired by hackathons, in which competing teams of computer programmers work together to create a fully functioning application in a very short amount of time, IgniteFM! presents a complex FM problem to student teams who compete to find a solution. Teams present their solutions to an audience and are judged by a panel of FM professionals. The winning team receives a cash prize. Come see the innovative problem-solving of future FMs. SPONSORED BY: FM:SYSTEMS

• explain past and current trends in office furniture
• state the effect that legacy office furniture can have upon the environment
• discuss what remanufactured furniture is and how to differentiate it from as is and refurbished furniture
• recall the environmental and economic savings of remanufactured furniture vs. newly manufactured furniture, and
• explain how remanufactured furniture might facilitate acquiring LEED® certification. 

When it comes to building capital budgets for your organization, how often is "facilities" at the top of the list of priorities? If you answered "never" you certainly aren't alone. Facilities are expensive to maintain and they can often be lumped in with other cost line items you need to approve. Seen through this lens, it is easy to understand why they have historically struggled to make it to the top of the strategic capital planning priority list. While capital planning for facilities typically is full of uncertainty, outdated data and assumptions, it doesn't have to be that way. Getting this process right is especially critical now as buildings that have sat vacant for a year begin to ramp up, where the impacts of deferred maintenance and capital projects will start to be felt. Join us as we cover ways that cutting-edge organizations are building more accurate capital budgets and how advanced technology such as IoT and AI play a role in the future of capital planning.

First impressions are important, and it feels good when you walk into a place of business that is clean, well designed and well managed. But it's not only about how your business looks. You also need to think about the potential safety liabilities to your employees and the public, as well as the associated costs of slip, trip and fall accidents at your entrance and beyond. Keeping floors safe requires more thought than tossing a 3x5 wrinkled commercial entrance mat inside the doorway, especially when it rains or snows. To be effective, entrance matting needs to be of a sufficient length and size to remove liquids and trap dirt before people walk off it. Join us for this informative workshop as we walk the audience through their process for determining the right type of matting coverage and other best practices to keep your building clean, dry and accident-free.

Today's office environment requires more agility and adaptability than in any previous decade. The list of changes occurring are constantly evolving, but they all require being free and untethered from the building. This session will examine how a designer accounts for the technological needs like power/data for these areas when the fixed assets, like the older building and power infrastructure, were built to handle a historically attached world. The new technological requirements will be measured, and a variety of solutions will be examined to assist designers with these modern challenges.

Xcluder's Troy Bergum reveals facilities' greatest vulnerabilities, from rodents to other external contaminants, and provides solutions for proactively and comprehensively protecting people, structures and products.

Over the past two years, the workplace has undergone transformation at an unprecedented pace. Fueled by the COVID pandemic, many organizations have adjusted their operations to deal with the risk of infection. Keeping the workforce safe has been paramount. As many trendwatchers and workplace strategists rightfully state, the pandemic significantly accelerated workplace developments by several years. But what are these transformations really? And what do they imply for facilities planning, management and operations? How can new hybrid workplace models provide for enhanced resilience? How can we professionalize the hybrid workplace to ensure health, safety and efficient, uninterrupted business operations, as we do in the traditional workplace? And what does that imply for workplace information systems? This session will review the major lessons from the two years that we've just experienced, and provide practical solutions for managing the hybrid environment.

The term IWMS has been around for a long time, but no one system (until now) ever delivered on the promise of being a fully integrated workplace management tool. Most IWMS were created through acquisitions, unstable integrations and bolted-on tools. Nuvolo is built on a single connected platform and is designed by industry experts and customers around the connected workplace vision. Created to manage the full real estate life cycle, it provides one place for business units to collaborate. Sharing work orders, assets, projects, invoices, contracts, workflows and more throughout your facilities and workplace departments not only gets work done faster but also gives you the data for sound capacity planning and operating expense savings. Join this presentation to learn how effective the connected workplace is, including a product demonstration.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed how easily airborne viruses and other microbes can spread among occupants in offices, education, health care, hotel, manufacturing, and especially residential senior care facilities and similar other indoor environments. As a result, facility managers, building owners and HVAC engineers need to find reliable and cost-effective ways to protect building occupants and avoid business disruption. Attendees will learn how to improve indoor air quality and protect building occupants from coronavirus, flu and other airborne viruses using ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI), also called UV-C, air disinfection technology. Understand how UVGI works, typical installations and applications, how UVGI compares to other air disinfection technologies, and hear success stories of actual UVGI air disinfection installations.

Learn to deal with uncertainty, including power interruptions, air quality and more. Better prepare for the unknown.

A panel will share their knowledge concerning this everyday occurrence and how to meet this challenge through sustainable practices. Hear about strategies to keep waste materials out of landfill through a circular economy. Panelists will describe how they have dealt with today's challenges, pandemic waste and the future opportunities to reduce landfill waste.

This issuance of the United Nation’s global report on Climate Change in August is an urgent call to IFMA members to take action in the built environment, in those areas where we can educate, inform and promote. The Circular Economy is one such very practical field of opportunity. Learn the difference between circular and linear economies and how you can make a difference on a personal, organizational, communal or cultural level.

Robert Glennon is the go-to resource for any group that wants to understand why protecting our water supply is as much an economic issue as an environmental one.With his deep grasp of the scientific, historical, economic and legal issues associated with America's water predicament, Robert gives audiences a comprehensive understanding of why a water shortage is imminent and what it will take to save the country's dwindling supply.Robert expertly captured the tragedy and irony of the water crisis in his New York Times best-selling book Unquenchable and the highly-acclaimed Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters. On stage, he offers the same honest and urgent appraisal of the country's challenges, while stressing the importance of technology and innovative thinking to solving the problem. With detailed, actionable suggestions, he lays out an attainable vision for a sustainable water future.Robert's gift for telling the broader story about water quenches the longing among audience members to identify their role in contributing to this growing cause of concern.

Simon T. Bailey believes you are meant to share your brilliance. His passion and purpose is unlocking that ability in a way that ignites sustainable transformation.He understands the pressure leaders and high performers are facing in the midst of uncertainty and equips them with simple, easy-to-implement strategies to accelerate results.LinkedIn Learning features three of his online courses that reach professionals in 100 countries.Simon has more than 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, including serving as sales director for Disney Institute, and has worked with more than 1,800 organizations in 50 countries.He has been named one of the top 25 people who will help you reach your business and life goals by SUCCESS Magazine, joining a list that includes Brene Brown, Tony Robbins, and Oprah Winfrey. His Goalcast video, released on Facebook, has over 90 million views worldwide.When he is not working, Simon serves as a board member for the U.S. Dream Academy and Orlando Health Foundation Board.

The goal of this session is help participants understand the increasing importance of APIs in facilities management and the role they play in bringing multiple systems together in the building. APIs are modern-day contracts for sharing data for the purpose of creating better, more connected solutions that can further address the unmet needs of various actors in the building, whether that’s the building owner, manager, employee, tenant, guest or visitor.

"The Experts' Assessment: The Workplace Post-COVID-19" launched a year-long dialogue and debate among some of the industry's leading subject matter experts about the future of the workplace as the industry contended with the challenges wrought by the pandemic. Back by popular demand, Peter Ankerstjerne (IFMA/Planon), Jeffrey Saunders (Nordic Foresight), Dr. Marie Puybaraud (JLL), Luis Vina (CBRE) and Kay Sargent (HOK) will discuss what they have learned over the course of the pandemic, what they see emerging on the horizon and the implications for the industry. Topics will include workplace strategy setting, new services offered, WFH scenarios, budget priorities and skills required.

Ahoy, Yea Buccaneers! Dress the part of yer favorite swashbuckler for the IFMA Foundation's Pirate Regatta. Blow me down, it will be an evening of games, pirate competitions and fun. Purchase your tickets for two complimentary drinks and light vittles. Landlubber or seadog, it's a pirate's life for everyone! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!