Dave Wilson reports from hurricane-ravaged Houston on this year's World Workplace conference, where British input was much in evidence.
On September 1, Hurricane Harvey finally moved inland from Houston, Texas. It had dropped in excess of one trillion gallons of water on the city and surrounding areas, according to one estimate enough to raise the Great Lakes by 20 inches.
In coping with the impact of that, the George R Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston provided temporary accommodation for over 6,000 people made homeless in the devastating floods.
On October 17 - just 47 days later - IFMA’s World Workplaceopened in that same location.
Whatever heroic efforts were required by both the Center’s facilities staff and by IFMA’s own team in those seven weeks might not have been seen, but the simple fact that the conference took place at all was testament to a huge commitment to show that Houston could bounce back. When you consider too that about half of IFMA’s own staff were among those flooded out of their homes, their dedication and commitment to putting on the show are simply astounding.
Of course, such a catastrophic event has a residual effect. Delegate numbers at the conference were clearly down on previous years, largely because of uncertainty about whether it could go ahead during a key booking period. And, while Houston seems a perfectly nice city, it isn’t as attractive a venue as last year’s, San Diego, while the physical evidence of the floods can be seen in huge piles of sandy sludge, dredged from the local bayous after the flooding, which cover the parks and river banks of the city.
In that context the actual conference itself might seem rather irrelevant, but for the UK delegates who made the journey it was nonetheless highly important as our collective impact and contribution to the profession begin to be felt. Andrew Mawson and Chris Hood from Advanced Workplace Associates were the first to present their wares, showcasing the Workplace Management Framework which has now been formally endorsed by IFMA, in a Tuesday workshop provocatively titled ‘From FM to Workplace Management’, which in a thoroughly engaging morning looked at the potential future for a role of ‘Chief Workplace Officer’ and what that might mean for both FM and our clients. Chris also played a leading role in a series of presentations held during the week under the banner of ‘Workplace Evolutionaries’ - already a strong movement within IFMA in North America and intended to launch its UK presence shortly.