I have a degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering. The only reason I knew what I would be doing after graduation was that I had completed two fantastic internships with UPS Supply Chain Solutions and they were offering me a job. It just happened that the role was in their facilities engineering team that built new warehouses, implemented client solutions within those buildings, and generally did the strategic work of how their real estate could be used to support 3rd party logistics. In my mind, it was a logistics job, but I have since come to realize that it was always real estate. Since then, every year has moved me closer and closer to better understanding what Corporate Real Estate is (and yes, I am specifically avoiding mention of Commercial Real Estate which is a completely different industry even though it pretends it is not).
The way I describe Industrial Engineering is that it is all about understanding how to make processes and systems better over time. As a discipline, it requires graduates to understand finance, probability and statistics, human/computer relationships, elements of behavioral psychology, six sigma, and lean, while developing an appreciation for the fact that no problem exists in a vacuum. Over and over it was drilled into us that success on a project requires a multi-disciplinary team effort. You must understand at least the basic principles of other areas if you are going to improve a process that involves them.
Corporate Real Estate is a bit of the same. It is an area that does require some specific knowledge but it is more important to understand the many areas it impacts through its decisions and direction. A bad real estate person goes out and makes a decision on an office, warehouse, or retail location based purely on general market conditions and how well real estate people say similar locations have performed. A good real estate person goes into their own business to understand what is important to their own success to develop a set of criteria to define a real estate direction before even approaching the more general real estate market. Good real estate people start by understanding the business and how their decisions can operationally impact it for good or bad.
At their heart, both Industrial Engineering and Corporate Real Estate require being open to learning and understanding areas that are outside your comfort zone. We will not be designing and building bridges, but we may be figuring out when the bridge is needed and where it needs to be. We may not be winning revenue for the company, but bad decisions on our part could certainly make it harder for others to bring it in.
Optimization and continuous improvement are fundamental to both worlds. Real estate does not operate at a point in time. Every real estate decision affects this year, next year, and many years into the future. The details of a decision today could make it impossible to do something tomorrow that is unexpectedly important. Creating a strategy that is flexible to the non-real estate business requirements is more important than being really good at negotiating a lease. Significantly more money is made and lost for a business through good/bad timing and decisions than failing to negotiate a 10% better deal.