October 2023 E-News
Common Ground
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President Biden’s New Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to gain attention for a variety of business applications while raising concerns about oversight of this expanding technology. AI has been available for decades but has found favor more broadly over the past few years, and at an accelerated pace in the last 18 months.
Media outlets including CNBC reported yesterday that President Biden signed a broad reaching Executive Order addressing new standards for AI safety and security including government agencies, its impact on the labor market, and more. A requirement for safety test results to be shared is a major provision of the order. An acknowledged concern about cybersecurity risk and rights to privacy contributed to the need to develop and implement oversight quickly.
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Now’s the time to build your Energy Data Management Skills
OSCRE International now offers an energy data management certificate program, Effective Energy Data Management. This program is designed to help business and IT professionals in the real estate industry develop a more data-driven and technology-focused approach to collecting, analyzing and reporting environmental data.
The launch of this on-demand program comes at a time when corporations need to make more informed decisions on real estate’s environmental impact and reduce their carbon footprint. Organizations understand that the commitment is not only important for the environment but also for customers, employees, and other stakeholders. Senior leaders understand that sustainability is a business imperative, and they need new skills in their workforce to ensure their operations are responsible, transparent, and aligned with their values. The certificate program provides a foundation of digital competency that can be beneficial across the organization – team members from the business and IT can develop a common understanding to advance the organization’s environmental efforts whether you’re ready to implement the OSCRE Environmental Data Standards or not.
The right skills and knowledge are essential for the real estate sector to advance and to handle the upcoming reporting mandates including those required at the municipal level in 2024 (NYC) and the anticipated final SEC rules that will require public corporations to report on their environmental impact. It was expected that the final rule would be published this fall, and the SEC’s Chairman Gary Gensler did note at a recent congressional hearing that over 16,000 comments had been received during the comment period. Here’s an interesting article from Harvard Law School to provide perspective. The Federal Register does not currently include any updates on advancing the proposed rule. |
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The OSCRE Academy is proud to announce the new certificate program,
Increase your understanding of the challenges of disparate data across platforms that impact consistency, accuracy, transparency and interoperability. Be ready to meet the need for energy data management. Help your organization to move quickly and develop an effective approach to environmental data.
Upskilling increases your marketability for new and emerging positions involving environmental data management and provides opportunity for mobility across the organization in areas where skills are in short supply.
The program is available online 24/7.
You have one year to complete the ten sessions. Upon successful completion of all sessions you will received a course completion certificate from OSCRE.
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Let us know what you think:
Poll results will be included in next month's newsletter
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Which best describes your organization's approach to address the demands of local energy laws?
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Implemented data management in locations where laws are approved
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Gathering and reporting data in some markets
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Beginning to assess corporate readiness for compliance
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No active program currently underway
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AI Polling Results
The polling question from last month’s newsletter provided some interesting perspective on how organizations are using AI. More than 27% responded that AI has been fully implemented for some use cases, demonstrating an increased understanding of the capabilities that exist in the platforms of external business partners and proprietary applications. At the other end of the spectrum, 23% reported no interest in exploring AI capabilities. With 27% of respondents acknowledging they are just starting the journey to explore AI and its benefits, and the remaining 23% participating in pilot projects, there’s a lot of opportunity for growth in utilizing the power of AI, and a need for better understanding of its capabilities to achieve competitive advantage on multiple fronts.
We asked the same question of the Innovation Forum attendees last Tuesday, and a similar percentage (25%) reported they have fully implemented AI for specific use cases and 21% are participating in pilot projects. Less than 4% of respondents reported no current activity or interest. 50% of the webinar attendees reported they are just starting to evaluate AI capabilities, in stark contrast to the newsletter readers. What could account for this significant difference in response? It’s possible that this much larger number indicates the respondents are further along the journey than the newsletter readers, and it should be noted there’s a 5-week time lapse in responses. AI is moving at an accelerated pace and external business partners are acknowledging AI’s presence in their platforms in increasing numbers. The value of AI increases exponentially with time, as the technology “learns” with the collection of more and more data. This learning can be harnessed not just for data collection, analytics and reporting but also to better inform critical business decisions. We will continue to monitor AI’s advancement and how the industry is using it on multiple fronts, including how real estate interacts with the environment.
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October Innovation Forum Recap: AI Shows Promise and Faces Challenges in Real Estate
OSCRE’s latest Innovation Forum continues to investigate the evolution of AI capabilities in real estate. Emerging use cases in areas such as managing leases, optimizing occupancy, loan origination, or energy management show a lot of promise and include solving complexity challenges, conducting predictive analytics, or asking questions in a natural language. However, the panel identified some of the primary challenges that will affect implementations directly, including:
- Gathering broad types of data from many sources beyond what we typically manage today
- Combining broad data with unstructured and global data
- While expectations for AI are high, knowledge and resources are in short supply
- The high reliance on integration calls for solving difficulties connecting third party systems
- Data quality is paramount, supporting the need for data standards
- Natural language applications still have a long way to go affecting the pace of user adoption.
Missed the Innovation Forum webinar? You can still access the recording here.
New Energy Data Standard released and pilots underway
In October, OSCRE’s Board approved the release of the new energy data standard after less than a year of rapid development. The use cases and the supporting materials are now available from the OSCRE website as version 3.6 of the OSCRE Industry Data ModelTM. An implementation guide will help answer questions on how to proceed including how to assess the new standards fit in your organization. Three pilot projects currently under development will also contribute to assessing how you can implement the energy data standards and case studies will be compiled upon completion. The purpose of these pilots is to create a structured, replicable method of assessing the fit, viability and benefits of implementing the standards in any organization. When completed, lessons learned from these pilots will be incorporated into an opportunity assessment guide that will help you gain alignment and support for implementing the standards in your organization.
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OSCRE’s Council of 100 convened in NYC on October 12th and was hosted by JLL Spark, taking on the topic ESG 2.0 and Beyond. The Chief Data Officer for a large investment firm shared his insights on pain points and progress for environmental data and how to engage senior leaders within organizations to support the transformational change needed to move forward.
Innovation workshops were held in small groups to take up topics including Generative AI, pilot project updates for the energy data management standards, what’s next in environmental data standards development, and how to drive your business forward in addressing data challenges over the next 18-24 months. A panel of industry leaders also provided frank discussion on the need for collaboration across the supply chain as the expectation for environmental data reporting expands beyond 10K Reports.
The afternoon session also included acknowledgement of the need for a corporate data strategy to guide organizations in setting their future course, and operational excellence needed to advance to ESG 2.0. In keeping with the Chatham House Rule, comments aren’t attributed to any of the participating individuals or their organizations. If you’d like to know how you can participate in future Council of 100 meetings and drive real estate industry change, please contact us at info@oscre.org.
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Helping to effect meaningful sustainability progress in real estate
Buildings account for about 40% of CO2 emissions, from both operating and embodied carbon, and account for almost the same percentage of global energy consumption, as reported in CBRE’s Facilities Management Cost Trends 2022 Report. However, while 40% of energy consumed in a building is for the HVAC system, about 30% of building energy consumed is wasted.1,2 Ernst & Young LLP recognizes that there is a considerable positive impact to the environment that can be achieved through improving the efficiency of operation of HVAC systems in buildings.
Our breadth and depth of services in real estate, ESG and Sustainability
The EY Corporate Real Estate (CRE) practice brings a full suite of competencies to address a wide range of needs, including corporate real estate operating model restructuring, organizational design, outsourcing and service delivery, as well as location strategy, M&A transaction support, facilities management strategy, footprint rationalization, asset monetization and financial strategies.
“As businesses and buildings address digital transformation, we collaborate with clients on CRE IT strategy and are ready to support next generation real estate technology platform needs, as well as digital workplace and smart building efforts,” said Francisco J. Acoba, Principal and Americas Co-Lead, Corporate Real Estate Practice. EY Smart Building services encompass a wide range of capabilities designed to drive value and optimize building performance in such areas as operational efficiency, sustainability, enhanced human experience and health, safety and wellbeing.
For more information, please contact Francisco J. Acoba, EY Corporate Real Estate Practice Co-leader.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.
1 Sarah Fisher, “As Climate Risks and Opportunities Converge, Leading Real Estate Organizations Turn an Eye to their HVAC Systems,” Realcomm, 30 March 2023, ©2023 Realcomm. All rights reserved.
2 “Why HVAC Diagnostics Matter for Operations & Maintenance Teams,” Clockworks Analytics, 26 April 2022, ©Copyright 2023 Clockworks Analytics. All Rights Reserved.
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