Toward quantitative modeling of CRE decision making

Citation

Appel-Meulenbroek, R. (2015), "Toward quantitative modeling of CRE decision making", Journal of Corporate Real Estate, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRE-03-2015-0008

Toward quantitative modeling of CRE decision making

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Corporate Real Estate, Volume 17, Issue 2

Welcome to the fifth special issue of the Journal of Corporate Real Estate with papers from the European Real Estate Society (ERES) conference. We started after the ERES 2009 conference and have missed only one year, so now we celebrate the fifth anniversary. Hopefully, these special issues will be followed by many more, as the papers from the ERES conference are very valuable to the journal. CRE academics are scattered over the world and we do not all attend a specific conference. That makes it hard to identify what everybody is doing and set coordinated actions to advance the field. But in these past years, the ERES conference has seen a steady flow of papers on CRE and hopefully has started a sustainable community of CRE research.

Last summer in Bucharest, it was the twenty-first time that ERES organized their conference. It was good to be back in Eastern Europe for the second time (ERES Krakow was in 2008). ERES aims to cover the entire continent, because a local conference always increases the presence of papers from that region. Unfortunately, no CRE paper from Eastern European universities has come through for this special issue, but I am hopeful there will be some soon. Just like previous years, the special issue papers are written by academics from Western European universities.

Past ERES specials revolved around user preferences, the CREM function and how to achieve alignment in general. Similar to last year, the papers in this year’s special focus on achieving alignment and try to model the process for achieving this. However, this time all authors chose more specific types of corporate environments. The first two papers focus on the educational environment in universities, while the third tries to calculate space use in new ways of working environments. The fourth paper models decision making with regard to implementing energy-saving measures and chose a city hall to demonstrate its working.

The authors of the first paper “Management strategies for aligning higher education accommodation with the user needs” questioned the real estate managers of 14 Dutch universities of applied sciences. Although the respondents were ambiguous about the impact of current developments in this sector on the quantity of learning space, they do expect a need for different and higher-quality learning settings.

The second paper “Designing a Preference-based Accommodation Strategy: A pilot study at Delft University of Technology” studied one Dutch university in-depth. It provides an overview of existing alignment models, from which the authors conclude that none is able to design a portfolio, make use of scales for direct measurement of added value/preference and aggregate to an overall performance rating. They discuss their new model and apply it to the use of lecture halls at a Dutch university to demonstrate its working.

The model described in the third paper “Calculating NWOW office space with the PACT model” also has a quantitative approach. It calculates the use of different work settings in activity-based offices, which is more complex than regular offices, as many more determinants have to be taken into account.

The tool in the last paper “Implementing energy-saving measures: a decision support tool for corporate real estate management” consists of a system dynamics model. It quantifies the interaction between potential maintenance scenarios, external energy factors and case-specific conditions. A case study of a city hall showed the working of this elaborate model.

These last three papers all try to take steps toward quantitative modeling of CRE decision making. I started working on this special issue as a Guest Editor, but have since joined Howard as Co-Editor of the journal. So, from now on, I will also be responsible for filling the other three issues each year with interesting research papers. Besides the special issues on ERES papers, the journal has seen a steady input of papers, but usually these are finalized close to publishing deadlines. Therefore, in the coming years, we hope to increase the input of papers to the journal. We hope that you will all consider publishing your latest research in the journal next year.

This year, the 22nd ERES Conference will be held on the 24th-28th of June in Istanbul. Howard and I intend to hold a special Editorial Board Meeting there, to discuss the field of CRE research, how to advance it and how to further increase the strength of the Journal. We hope to meet many of the readers of our Journal there and discuss your ideas. Do let us know if you will be visiting ERES in Istanbul and we will set up a time to meet you. For now, enjoy reading another great special issue of the Journal.

Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek - Co-Editor + ERES board member

About the author

Rianne Appel-Meulenbroek, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of CRE management at Eindhoven University of Technology. Her education and research activities focus on the way CREM can provide added value for an organization. She is a board member of ERES, and a track chair for the sessions on CRE(M).