OTTAWA, January 30, 2003 ­ The global impact of 9/11 is influencing large organizations to shift from a facilities model that creates large clusters of workers in centralized locations to one that supports geographically dispersed workers in smaller facilities, according to Tony Gill, Senior Director, Corporate Services, Real Facilities Inc., a corporate real estate advisory firm (www.realfacilities.com).

Speaking today at the Real Property Institute of Canada's conference in Ottawa, Gill says, "The impacts of the terrorist attacks on New York have broad organizational consequences that inevitably affect real estate. Real estate managers need to be aware of how interrelated their own activities are to general business operations, both within the organization, as well as within a broader network of organizational participants. This is particularly important to sectors of the economy that have a fiduciary duty to their clients to remain in continuous operation, such as the financial and insurance sectors, as well as all levels of government. Thus, organizations will increasingly employ measures to neutralize the risk associated with clustering, by adopting work cultures that will become more dispersed."

Gill, who wrote an early paper on the post-incident real estate fallout, has spent the past year researching the attack's after-effects on Canadian commercial real estate. His current report broadens the initial study's scope to include research from the investment, technology, and management communities in North America.

"Terrorism has significantly affected commercial real estate in places such as the US and the UK and, given the multinational reach of firms based in these countries, it's inevitable that change will also affect Canada", says Stan Krawitz, President, Real Facilities Inc., "This study provides a step-by-step program on how large organizations need to decentralize in the face of our current reality. Although change will not occur overnight, it will certainly have long-term implications on the Canadian real estate landscape."

New facility strategies that rely more heavily on decentralization will affect the location of space, the way it is used, and how organizations change staffing policy. It also has the economic potential of invigorating communities not normally associated with large organizations. The central message is that real estate planning cannot operate in isolation and that real estate managers need to be more connected with the strategic direction of an organization. Gill, an industry veteran, is available to provide highlights of his research and discuss the effects of events that cause significant disruption in the Canadian real estate sector.

Topics covered in the study include:

• An overview of the physical/economic impacts of terrorist attacks on New York, as well as decentralization policies enacted by displaced tenants from lower Manhattan;
• Parallels between Canadian and U.S markets, and their similar usage patterns;
• Demonstrating the risks of organizational clustering;
• Identifying the factors associated with decentralization and the industries most likely to adopt it;
• The factors and the need associated with the decentralization or dispersal of data;
• How decentralization requires a reconfiguration of organizational structure; and
• Effects on the insurance industry, and its impact on users and investors in commercial real estate.

About Real Facilities Inc.
Real Facilities Inc. (www.realfacilities.com) is a Toronto-based, employee-owned, group of corporate real estate professionals representing the best interests of corporate space users. Other service providers represent both landlords and tenants, buyers and sellers, and create a marked conflict of interest. Real Facilities represents its clients only. Real Facilities’ process delivers tangible cost savings and productivity increases for its clients before, during, and following a move.

Real Facilities is proud to include companies such as LCBO, KIA Canada, Royal Bank of Canada, National Bank of Canada, Trillium Health Centre, Ombudsman Ontario, and VISION TV as its clients.