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Avante News
| 2002-10-22 | Globe and Mail |
| Webcam a real look at real estate Already common at building sites, long-term benefits to owners, tenants grow apparent By ALBERT WARSON Special to The Globe and Mail Tuesday, October 22, 2002 – Page B12 TORONTO -- On a clear day Moshe Wertheim may not be able to see forever from his office in downtown Toronto, but he can watch what's happening at two high-rise construction sites a few thousand kilometres apart in different countries. He simply logs on to Web sites using the computer behind his desk at First Canadian Place. One building he visits regularly is Reichmann International's 55-storey Torre Mayor tower in Mexico City, being billed as the tallest structure south of the U.S. border. The other, a few blocks from where he sits in Toronto, is O&Y Properties Corp.'s 20-storey Maritime Life Tower at Queen and Yonge Streets. Both were topped off within the past five months. This may not seem especially dazzling in an age of high-tech telecommunications, but it shows how the convergence of Webcam monitoring and broad-band, high-speed Internet access is catching on among developers with far-flung operations. Webcams -- video cameras that can send images over the Net -- have become a commonplace of commercial and residential surveillance systems. O&Y Properties, for example, has a standard pan-tilt-zoom video camera on top of its 72-storey First Canadian Place head office building that has been trained on the Maritime Life project since construction began in November, 2001. It allows Mr. Wertheim, the company's senior vice-president of innovations and technical services, to watch live feeds from the construction site on his computer monitor. Also authorized to view the Maritime Life Web site are owners, developers, general contractors, signed and prospective tenants and others with an interest in knowing whether construction is on schedule. The Toronto site is accessible only by password. The Torre Mayor Web site (http://www.torremayor.com.mx/camera.htm), on the other hand, can be viewed by anyone. The images, transmitted every minute from rooftop Webcams posted nearby, are jerky but still discernible. The Webcam atop First Canadian Place provides a bird's-eye view of everything from streets on the perimeter to traffic conditions and weather patterns kilometres away. That gives it a post-construction value for future tenants. "We will also mount a Webcam on top of the Maritime Life tower so that in a few months tenants in both buildings will, for example, be able to call up live images of traffic conditions from their desktop computers before leaving for home," Mr. Wertheim says. The rooftop surveillance system will be part of O&Y Properties' Building Connect service, which relays work-order and concierge-related service messages over the Internet to all tenants in O&Y REIT's 4.5-million-square-foot portfolio across Canada. Within a few months, he says "tenants will be able to change the temperature in their offices by two degrees, up or down, and switch lights on and off, among other features, from their computers or wireless devices." However, wireless communication hasn't yet been perfected. It doesn't work in certain parts of a high-rise building, or at certain times, such as late in the afternoon when telephone traffic is heavy, he adds. Nonetheless, O&Y is testing a new wireless communication system geared to its retail tenants in one of the company's Calgary office towers. He expects it to be operational early next year. EllisDon Corp., which is building the Maritime Life Tower, is familiar with the technology and its benefits. Bruce Fleming, EllisDon's chief information officer and vice-president, says the company has Webcams on jobs at Parry Sound, Ont., Halifax, Calgary, Miami and Charleston, S.C., which transmit live feeds to the company's Toronto and London, Ont., head offices. "The technology isn't new, but is more mature, with better connectivity and much faster feeds," he says. "Three years ago it was hard to get a decent Internet connection. The Webcam didn't load up the images fast enough to give any sense of movement." Cameras at both ends also enable managers to consult interactively, in real time and face-to-face. What's next? Mr. Fleming says that in the not-too-distant future, someone with a laptop computer and video camera, using wireless technology, will be able to roam around a construction site, even inside buildings once the exterior is completed, and transmit live images. Also coming up: interactive conferences with people around the world. "The camera technology is there," he says. "The challenge is connectivity." There are marketing and customer relations spinoffs -- contractors' clients are reassured if they can see the progress, Mr. Fleming says. There are fund-raising applications as well. Stephen Gash, EllisDon's vice-president of business development, says patrons of the recent acoustical makeover at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto were able to observe their dollars at work. Time or distance is no longer relevant. Mr. Gash cited a plant the company built recently in London, Ont., for a German manufacturer of car seat structures. "This was the client's first project in North America, so they were understandably curious. They would come to their office at night in Germany to see the work in Ontario, in real time, during the day," he says. EllisDon was also able to incorporate relevant data in the images. There is another application of the Webcam/Internet system that wouldn't seem obvious at first. Kevin Redmond, project manager for Western Canada at Cadillac Fairview Corp., says a Webcam on top of a 21-storey company-owned building in downtown Vancouver has been taking pictures every three to four seconds of the nearly completed 20-storey PricewaterhouseCoopers Place tower nearby. "By storing all the images and using digital time-lapse photography we will be able to produce a video showing the building being completed in five or six minutes. We will also be able to slow it down for detail or speed it up," Mr. Redmond says. The company has marketing purposes in mind. "In the meantime, the people at head office can dial up the Web site at any time and access the building live to see where we are in construction and comment on its progress. They can even see what the traffic and weather are like." The advantages aren't restricted to high-rise buildings. FirstPro Shopping Centres Inc. of Toronto, Canada's largest mall developer, uses it at many of its developments across Canada. Brian Thompson, FirstPro's director of information technology, says it helps make sure trades appear on job sites in proper sequence. Nor does it have to be removed from light standards when the work is done. Mr. Thompson says the system can stay on to research parking patterns, to monitor snow removal or to look at the big picture of a mall to see how or where improvements might be made over time. Webcam technology is already playing an important role during the construction process. Now its long-term benefits for both owners and tenants are gradually being discovered. |
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