Last week we attended our biggest show of the year, IFMA’s World Workplace. Eight of us made the trip out to San Diego to attend the show and we couldn’t have asked for a better place, the weather was perfect and the city is absolutely beautiful. Once again the show was a great success—our week was packed full of networking, learning about new innovations in today’s workforce and hearing from industry experts about the latest trends in facility management.

IFMA Foundation Celebration

On Tuesday night we attended the IFMA Foundation Celebration which honors donors and celebrates student scholarship recipients. There is a silent auction to raise money for the Foundation, music, videos on the Global Workforce Initiative and a night full of networking and fun. Everyone in attendance from FM:Systems volunteered the second half of the night at the front, greeting new arrivals and taking payments from the Work on the Move book that was just published. The book talks about how social, leadership and technology innovations are transforming the workplace in the digital economy.

Our Partnership with CoWorkr

Right before World Workplace we announced a partnership with CoWorkr, a company that provides a cloud-based platform for learning how workers use spaces throughout the office by using either motion or heat based sensors. CoWorkr’s IoT sensor technology and real-time space utilization along with FM:Systems Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) will allow facility and real estate professionals to perform real-time space analysis to help them better manage their space and occupancy.

Demonstrating our Facility Management Technologies

We demonstrated new features in FM:Interact throughout the expo hall hours on Wednesday and Thursday. As soon as the show started our booth was packed with facility professionals who were eager to see our software in action and learn more about what we have to offer. The CEO of CoWorkr was able to attend the show with us and she demonstrated a real-time space analysis of our booth. She placed motion sensors under chairs and heat sensors under the demonstration stations and was able to demonstrate in real time how our booth space was being utilized at that very moment. Demonstrating both FM:Systems IWMS solution as well as CoWorkr’s real-time space utilization allowed us to show how our partnership truly allows organizations to see real-time occupant data analysis for improving space utilization.

Presenting Industry Trends and Best Practices

Brian Haines presented on “The Future of Utilization” in the solutions arena, which discussed emerging new technologies such as FM:Systems Workplace Survey Application (WSA), remote sensing and mobile devices that are enabling organizations to better track real-time utilization.

Michael Schley also presented on “BIM and FM – Collaboration in the Cloud” which discussed new approaches that are helping building owners and facility managers leverage information in BIM models to improve operations.