New Modules Improve Communication and Customer Service
Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif., is reaping big benefits from its new space management, work order, and preventive maintenance systems, which mark the company's first steps in creating a Web-based facilities management program.

University of Chicago
The University of Chicago recently renovated and expanded its two-story, limestone science building built in the 1960s to accommodate the needs of a first-rate science facility. The new $11.2-million Biopsychological Sciences Building serves the interdisciplinary needs of the Department of Evolution and Ecology and the Department of Biopsychology.

Performance Measures Help to Reduce Space, Head Count, Costs
Fleet Bank is using more than a dozen different operating and program metrics to monitor outsourcing vendor performance and push down annual occupancy costs for a portfolio of 18 million sf of space spread among 2,600 properties in eight states.

New Technology Leaps Space and Cost Hurdles
Framingham State College is meeting the increasing demand for new computer labs and classrooms despite limited expansion space and the high cost of construction, thanks to a two-year-old pilot program testing the use of laptops equipped with wireless LAN (Local Area Network) cards. Throughout the 73-acre campus, strategically placed access units are giving laptop users a wireless connection to the existing network and the Internet over low-power radio frequency waves. This scheme allows students and professors to have the full benefits of a modern computer lab almost anywhere at the school without the expense of extensive remodeling, new construction, and equipment purchases.

Sonoma State University
The 215,000-sf Jean and Charles Schulz Information Center at Sonoma State University (SSU) has already changed student traffic patterns. Situated on the west side of the campus, it serves to connect and transition the residential community and the academic community, and is quickly becoming the new center of the campus. The three-story, steel-frame structure with its 53'-high clock tower is the largest addition in the University's 40-year history and was awarded the 2000 Distinctive Project Award from the Western Council of Construction Consumers.