Re‐thinking corporate real estate after September 11th

Surveys of corporate real estate executives in North America and elsewhere in the world indicate significant shifts in their thinking in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Aside from the predictably much greater concern with planning for emergency escape from buildings, executives indicated that the greatest shifts in their thinking centred around issues of security of information technology and communication systems; greater use of teleconferencing and video‐conferencing (reducing travel); and more new ways of working such as homeworking, satellite and neighbourhood work centres, and hotelling. Along with such changes in practice, executives also indicated the desire to create stronger communities within their organisations, even as they also expect further to disperse their activities across locations. There is a slight shift in preference away from downtown locations and a much higher overall concern with occupancy control over the spaces that they occupy. In North America especially, there is a shift away from occupancy of high‐profile named buildings. Overall the surveys indicate that corporate real estate executives are moving ahead with distributed work‐location strategies, increasing their reliance on virtual technologies for collaboration, and re‐thinking the branding of their physical assets and the nature of community in their organisations. All of these changes further indicate the increasingly integrative role of corporate real estate within wider business strategy and a closer alignment of corporate real estate activities with human resources, organisational development and information technology.