Currently, most real estate related metrics focus on portfolio related measurements and have few means or mechanisms to measure actual utilization and performance. So the true performance of real estate, the second largest cost for most organizations, remains a mystery to management.

The Open Standards Consortium for Real Estate (OSCRE) is rectifying this situation. This consortium, which counts most major organizations dealing with Corporate Real Estate among its members, is focused on standardizing the metrics and definitions used within the real estate industry so that a smooth flow of information can take place from one system to another. Corporate Real Estate Managers will be able to use “OSCRE compliance” as one facet in evaluating and selecting systems for in-house use.

The consortium’s goal is to facilitate a greater level of coordination, standardization and collaboration across the key stakeholders in the CRE industry - corporations, public agencies, service providers, management consulting organizations, software vendors and suppliers. OSCRE began as "Operation eCRE" in September 2000 at the IDRC Silicon Valley Discovery Forum at a grass roots level, organized and operated by a group of corporate real estate technology managers from companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, Sprint, Sun Microsystems, Citigroup, Capital One, and Intel. Recent developments in the evolution of our standards development consortium lead to the creation and launch of OSCRE at RealComm 2003 on June 4, 2003.

In January 2005 John Vivadelli, president and founder of AgilQuest Corporation, was elected chairman of OSCRE’s Standards and Planning Workgroup. This Work Group is considering five key real estate metrics for definition. They are

1. Utilization rates as measured by both allocation and actual usage, for example, share of area or workspaces allocated and share of “workspace duration” actually used; 

2. Amount of space required per demand driver for use in developing demand forecasts;

3. Corporate real estate costs (expensed and capital) and workplace resource costs (which also include measures of other infrastructure costs) as a share of corporate revenue and corporate expenses;

4. Measures of corporate real estate costs and workplace resource costs per amount of space and per demand driver (such as persons housed)

5. Corporate real estate overhead / management costs per demand driver. 

The first metric (utilization) has been defined and will soon be tested.