On January 19, 2023, OAC’s CEO Shawn Mahoney was honored to represent OAC at the Puget Sound Business Journal kickoff event of the year: the Economic Outlook. This was an overview of what CEOs, designers, and business leaders expect to see in 2023.
Shawn joined the below panelists and moderator to lend his perspective on commercial real estate changes for 2023.
Ryan Lambert – Editor-in-Chief, Puget Sound Business Journal (Moderator)
David Kutsunai – Managing Director, IA Interior Architects
Kristen Scott – Senior Principal, Weber Thompson
Jordan Selig – Executive Vice President, Martin Selig Real Estate
Flexible Technology for Today & Tomorrow
OAC is fortunate to have a broad perspective of commercial real estate. As a design and construction performance management firm, OAC’s employees engage with every phase of the project lifecycle. That’s how he concluded that today’s commercial buildings need to have flexible technology infrastructure designed in from the beginning similar to our smart phones. A smart phone is not developed for a single application – it’s developed to support systems and tools with a broad range of services.
Concrete and steel haven’t changed for decades, but what we put into commercial buildings now is drastically different from the past. Designers and builders need to understand the technology needs of the buildings and spaces upfront in the design process to enable the use of best-in-class AV, IT, security, human comfort, sustainability and other key systems needed in today’s workplace. Owners want technology enabled flexible spaces for their tenants today and into the future.