It’s hard to believe IFMA’s World Workplace has already come and gone but I can honestly say this was by far the best one FM:Systems has ever attended! We were constantly meeting new facilities and real estate professionals—learning about how they are managing their facilities and hearing from the leading experts from around the world about best practices, industry trends, and new technology that is advancing in today’s workplace.

IFMA Foundation Celebration

On Tuesday a few of us attended the IFMA Foundation Celebration at the Opera House, where we recognized the Foundation’s donors over some cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. FM:Systems has been a donor to the Foundation for years and it was nice to see our CEO and Founder, Michael Schley, get recognized for our contribution to the Foundation this year. FM:Systems donated a generous amount to the Foundation to launch the FM Academic Registry, an online registry of all known educational programs that teach Facility Management in order to generate awareness about these programs and help students and professionals choose Facility Management as a career of choice.

FM Academic Registry

We are very pleased that the FM Academic Registry is live! The site was launched while we were at World Workplace and we had press come to our booth on Thursday during expo hours to get a demonstration of the site and gain more insight on what the registry has to offer. We are so excited to continue growing the Facility Management industry and see students and professionals from all over the world get information on these Facility Management programs. Check out the FM Academic Registry at this link!

Integrated Workplace Management Suite

The expo hall was open on Wednesday and Thursday and we were able to demonstrate FM:Systems cutting-edge Facility Management technologies of our integrated workplace management software, FM:Interact. We are constantly adding new functionality to our product, recently these capabilities include graphical theming, a function that allows users to select and apply graphical queries to floor plans from multiple graphic views, and the ability to drag and drop and modify the graphic view legend. These all go hand in hand with our new FMx5 viewer, which is a floor plan viewer that leverages the power of HTML5 and allows users to quickly load large drawings, enabling them to access their floor plans with greater speed and ease.

FM:Systems presence at IFMA’s 2015 World Workplace

We had three presentations at the conference and had the opportunity to share our knowledge on topics such as BIM and FM as well as Facility Management technology trends we are seeing in today’s workplace. Our CEO and Founder, Michael Schley, presented both, “BIM for Real Estate & FM: Moving from Theory to Practice” as well as, “Three Technology Trends that are Transforming Facility Management” and Brian Haines, our Director of Marketing presented, “Preparing for Post Occupancy BIM.” All these presentations were heavily attended and we have received great feedback on these topics. We enjoy speaking at these conferences and sharing what we know about the industry with other facility and real estate professionals throughout the vertical industries we work with.

FM Academic Awards

On Thursday I was able to attend the FM Academic Awards, which is an awards ceremony recognizing students in facility management programs that have demonstrated significant achievements. I have worked with several of the universities that were in attendance through our Educational Grant Program, which is a six hour offering where we demonstrate our product, lecture on facility management, and allow the students to use our product hands-on to gain a better understanding of our tool and how it can help organizations better manage their facilities.