Bentall Real Estate Services

Bentall Real Estate Services reduces capital costs

Canada’s largest commercial real estate advisory and services organization, with operations throughout North America and China. Bentall’s complementary lines of business – real estate investment management and real estate services – are fully integrated. Bentall has over $17.6 billion in assets under management and more than 1,100 employees.

Background

Building systems management is rapidly adopting Internet Protocol (IP) standards
so suppliers can manage their products over the internet for increased
efficiency. Geographically distributed real estate portfolios can now take
advantage of IP-based building systems to improve operational efficiency and
reduce operating costs. This demands a sophisticated level of internet expertise
to implement and manage IP networks.

Challenge

Recognizing that more and more of their building management operations are
shifting to an IP platform, Bentall wanted to reduce capital costs related to
network infrastructure. They also needed a portfolio strategy for deployment
planning and operational management of new IP-based intelligent building systems.
The vision was that the IP network would support the requirements of operations,
security and marketing simultaneously.

Solution

Bentall’s flagship Vancouver property – the 2 million square foot, 5-building Bentall Centre – turned to Colony Networks for its expertise in strategy planning and managed services for deploying and managing IP networks. Colony’s Network as a Service platform combined building gateway hardware with cloud-based software, delivering unique per-building internet access controls for building systems and online services. Access is granted by Bentall-issued identification, simultaneously securing all systems and providing access audit records. Bentall can apportion costs on a per-building basis and track who uses what when for cost-recovery and reporting purposes. And, because it’s a managed-service approach, Bentall only pays for what it needs, when it needs it, yet can rapidly deploy new software with minimal investment and turnaround time now the IP standards are in place.

Results

Colony delivered an integrated IP infrastructure strategy that reduced capital costs and improved efficiency:

  • Provides secure, audited IP access for building automation systems
  • Costs are apportioned on a per-facility basis to operational budgets
  • Simplifies the time and minimizes the risk to deliver new technologies
  • Standardized service offering for any systems requirements across the entire Bentall portfolio, leveraging cloud-based software as a single control application
  • Colony now plans and implements wired and wireless infrastructure required to support IP building technologies to Bentall’s portfolio