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 Every business has a facility it needs to manage, but not every business has the inhouse expertise needed to do the job well. North of the border, in Canada, is where Brookfield LePage Johnson Controls (BLJC) comes in.
Founded in 1992 as a joint venture between Johnson Controls and Brookfield Properties, BLJC was created to provide facility management services in the Canadian marketplace.
At the time of its creation, there wasn’t much of a facility management industry in Canada. BLJC’s first client was Canada Post Corporation, as government organizations tended to be the first entities to look at outsourcing as a viable option in the delivery of facility management services. During the late 1990s, the private sector began embracing the concept as well.
“It was around that time that we started to see greater private sector outsourcing, starting in the tech sector and migrating into financial services,” said Gord Hicks, president. “Now we see it in oil and gas, retail, telecom, and more. It has certainly grown and migrated across industries.”
BLJC currently has offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and Victoria. It manages more than 9,000 buildings and 100 million square feet on behalf of its clients, making it the industry leader in Canada.
Expanding business horizons
With private industry now interested in outsourcing facility management services, BLJC has been able to gain a foothold in the oil and gas sector and financial services market on top of its prolific relationship with Canadian provincial and federal governments. One emerging market that presents opportunities for growth is the retail market. What has made the company more attractive over time is its ability to add value to clients by broadening services so it can provide a more holistic real estate management services solution.
“We’ve migrated from the early days of being very focused on facility management and project management. During the last 10 years, we’ve introduced additional lines of business, including real estate transaction and consulting services and occupancy planning,” said Hicks. “We also have an energy and sustainability line of business and have become an industry leader in providing innovative solutions to clients on reducing their carbon footprint, energy and water consumption, and the amount of waste sent to landfill.”
In fact, sustainability is one of the company’s biggest priorities, both internally and with client services. Because of the mainstreaming of environmental concerns, Hicks said BLJC’s clients see their real estate portfolio as a major contributor to their carbon footprint and want a partner to help them manage those emissions and reduce them. BLJC started by looking in the mirror, establishing its own carbon footprint baseline in 2007, and working to reduce it year after year. For example, it started replacing its truck fleet with hybrid vehicles.
The company was also out in front of just about everybody when in 2006 it banned the use of pesticides for cosmetic lawn purposes. In addition, it banned plastic water bottles in its offices, seeing a cost savings and waste reduction in the process. And the company launched a green Web site on its internal portal that will eventually migrate to its external site. Hicks thinks the site will become a place where suppliers, team members, clients, and industry professionals will visit to find and share ideas across industry and community.
“That is a leadership initiative we’ve taken on,” said Hicks. “For an organization to have a successful and sustained program around environment and sustainable development, there must be a culture of sustainability within the organization. In that area, we lead by example and are committed from the top down.”
The place to be
Other more traditional investments have been a big part of BLJC becoming the number one real estate management services provider in Canada. With technology, the company developed a full suite of modules to address an integrated real estate management solution encompassing multiple lines of business. The full suite of modules covers everything from operations and maintenance services to managing leases and providing financial budgeting and forecasting across the portfolio.
“By virtue of integrating this suite, we were able to effectively measure our progress in saving our clients money, which is one of the major drivers of outsourcing and cost reductions,” Hicks said. “You need technology to deliver on that promise.”
During the last decade, BLJC invested more than $20 million in technology upgrades. Hicks sees it as a key differentiator as it provides the company with the ability to deliver a quality service that can be measured for operational and financial performance.
With the support of its joint-venture owners and renewal initiatives on going, BLJC is creating a strong culture around quality, revisiting its key processes and identifying where the company can drive efficiency and create some cost reductions in its back office. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity for BLJC’s employees. BLJC always looks for top talent, and continuous improvement allows that talent to see their roles evolve as the company evolves.
The success of its hiring practices and the culture within BLJC is clear, as Hicks said 10% of its workforce are what he called “boomerangs.” These are people who left BLJC only to come back. Supporting that culture is BLJC’s commitment to charitable endeavors. It has 12 regional teams that are led locally, and BLJC’s corporate social responsibility program supports communities across the country with volunteer hours and financial contributions. Hicks said last year BLJC brought in close to $200,000 for charities and served thousands of volunteer hours. Now the company must figure out how to align with, and define the success of, its clients going forward.
“Understanding our clients’ objectives and cascading them throughout our organization allows us to achieve those objectives in a meaningful and measurable way, delivering what we promise and earning their trust,” said Hicks. “That allows the relationship to grow and expand and unlock additional value for our clients that they didn’t anticipate at the onset of the relationship. At BLJC, optimizing your workplace is our brand promise, and that’s a promise we keep.”
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