Feb. 24, 2010, Boston, Massachusetts – Evolving the real property industry to the next level of operating excellence means delivering more relevant information in a consistent format to more people at lower cost.
That means adopting Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) standards, says Andy Furhman, former CEO of OSCRE Americas, an international organization dedicated to delivering, and driving the adoption of, global standards for exchanging electronic real property information.
Furhman, now with Cisco Systems, made his remarks during a recent Webinar hosted by ARCHBIUS, Inc., (www.archibus.com) the #1 developer worldwide of real estate, infrastructure, facilities and environmental management software.
A recording of that webinar can be viewed at: http://www.archibus.com/webinar/fallweb09_3.cfm
OSCRE Normalizes Data Formats
With not one, commonly accepted and implemented standard in place for defining and exchanging real estate data, the OSCRE standard is an effort to normalize the data formats defined by other data standards-setting organizations that include the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), Building Owners Management Association (BOMA), and those organizations promoting technologies such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), and more.
A widespread adoption of OSCRE standards would create an easier, frictionless path to integrating building automation systems and communications systems, thereby achieving IP convergence and truly intelligent buildings.
“The real property industry is highly fragmented with many sectors and stakeholders,” notes Fuhrman. “So OSCRE standards are a way to ensure frictionless information exchange and management best practices with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) enterprise IT systems that use those industry standards. “
To date, OSCRE has developed:
- Commercial Information Exchange Standard for accelerating commercial real estate transactions
- Commercial Property Information Exchange Standard, for concise bulk exchange of property and tenant details
- Lease Abstract Exchange Standard, producing concise extracts enabling the lease and property management ecosystem
- Real Property Unique Identifier Standard, creating unique identifiers for use throughout the life of a real property asset
- Appraisal Reporting Standard for Commercial Property, for fast accurate appraisal data exchange and re-use.
- Work Request Work Order Fulfillment Standard, linking all parties to corporate facilities services management
- Space Classification Standard, for consistent space naming coordinated with space management
Easy Data Exchange Among Brokers, Developers, Others
The practical result of the widespread adoption of these standards would be a trouble-free exchange of real property information between brokers, developers/owners/investors, property listing service providers, and customers/tenants/users. This would eliminate current non-productive practices that include laborious custom data integration by brokers as well as limitations on property data feeds from developers/owners/investors, not to mention user constraints to importing required real property information from any source.
OSCRE, said Fuhrman, has been implemented at Public Works Government Services Canada, and in the United States in OSCRE-based projects being tested by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force, the latter having established a goal of reducing its physical plant 20% by 2020. OSCRE will help make space optimization and disposition of those properties easier.
OSCRE standards may also play a key role in transforming federal buildings into high-performance green buildings.
“Governments and businesses are demanding more from a leaner workforce while improving data access speed, quality and transparency in their real estate and facilities management operations,” said Fuhrman. “OSCRE is delivering on this critical demand…and is already in offices and businesses near you.”
About ARCHIBUS, Inc.
ARCHIBUS is the #1 global provider of real estate, infrastructure, and facilities management solutions and services with the total annual expenditures for ARCHIBUS-related products and services exceeding $1.7 Billion (USD). Through effective innovation and business transformation, ARCHIBUS users save their organizations over $100 billion annually. With ARCHIBUS, organizations can use a single, comprehensive, integrated solution to make informed strategic decisions that optimize return-on-investment, lower asset lifecycle costs, and increase enterprise-wide productivity and profitability. ARCHIBUS is the world-wide proponent for the creation of ubiquitous environmental sustainability.
ARCHIBUS is the #1 TIFM (Total Infrastructure & Facilities Management) solution in the world. More than 4,000,000 ARCHIBUS enterprise and Web users collectively manage over 5,000,000 properties, with organizations reporting facilities-related cost savings as high as 34%. With over 1,600 ARCHIBUS Business Partners, local and regional support worldwide is available in over 130 countries and in over two dozen languages. Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, ARCHIBUS, Inc. has pioneered computer-aided infrastructure and facilities management technologies since 1982. For more information, visit archibus.com.
