Siemens Real Estate

The real estate portfolio is managed in line with a real estate strategy matched to the Siemens business strategy. Business at Siemens never stands still and the company's space requirements likewise change and develop. Siemens Real Estate adapts the portfolio in step with the company's evolving requirements.

Tasks such as developing sites ready to meet future needs and realizing major real estate projects like the Siemens Campus Erlangen also fall under the remit of Siemens Real Estate. The next few years will see the research zone in the Southern part of Erlangen gradually transformed into one of the most advanced Siemens sites anywhere in the world. The campus will be open and welcoming to the general public and will provide open and flexible working environments for the people employed there.

Keyword MindSphere: from startups to sizable established companies, everyone relies on the cloud-based open IoT operating system from Siemens. Such rapid growth naturally creates enormous challenges – and not just for MindSphere developers, sales and marketing: new sites must be found around the world to keep pace with demand and fitted out with the latest in workstation technology. MindSphere has entrusted this particular challenge to Siemens Real Estate.

Siemens Real Estate ensures that office, industrial and special-purpose space works smoothly, safely and reliably and that costs are optimized. It spends an immense sum on maintenance,  a sum that impacts directly on the cost position of the operating units.

One of the principal tasks of Siemens Real Estate is the operation of all Siemens sites worldwide, office buildings and production facilities included. Its responsibilities encompass technical, infrastructure and other building services, some of which are provided by Siemens Real Estate itself and some of which it buys in and manages. The objective is to operate the spaces made available to the business units smoothly, safely and reliably at an optimal cost.

The continuous improvement process, key performance indicators (KPI) and audits ensure that quality is maintained at a high level.

Siemens Real Estate designs and operates the company's real estate to maximize economic performance and sustainability throughout the building life cycle. Innovative concepts such as the energy efficiency program for industrial buildings and the exploitation of renewable energy at Siemens sites enable Siemens Real Estate to reduce the company's CO2 emissions significantly. It has been possible to cut energy costs by more 4.4 million euros a year through construction measures and work to improve the energy-efficiency of building systems at well over a dozen production facilities, for example. New builds and key existing buildings are consistently refined for sustainability and certified under the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) international green building standard. There are currently 60 LEED-certified buildings in the Siemens portfolio.

Other steps taken by Siemens Real Estate to improve the sustainability of the company's buildings and minimize their contribution to climate change include promoting electromobility, cradle-to-cradle design and recycling and buying green electricity. 

Working environments are an essential element in making a company attractive for today's employees and tomorrow's talents. Modern working environments promote creativity and learning to help employees make the most of their individual skills and capabilities. Mindful of this, Siemens Real Estate never stops striving to enhance the working environments it provides for Siemens.

The Siemens Office concept forms the foundation of the company's modern working environments. Personal responsibility and flexibility are encouraged in a way that helps employees to strike a better balance between working life and private life. The original Siemens Office concept has subsequently been augmented with an IT Office concept, which supports agile working methods, and coworking options to strengthen creative collaboration across departmental boundaries. All of these concepts incorporate modern IT facilities that ensure, among other benefits, that virtual collaboration – a key factor in a company as thoroughly international as Siemens – is properly supported. 

Siemens Real Estate is enthusiastic about digitalization and is working hard at the moment to make the most of this new technology based on prototypes, existing data sources and a digital ecosystem that continues to expand through strategic partnerships with the Siemens Building Technologies and Energy Management Divisions. Bringing order to the flood of data pouring in from the wide range of different systems involved and leveraging it to obtain meaningful conclusions is another key priority. Vital in this connection is the support provided by MindSphere, the Siemens operating system for the Internet of Things. Prototypes in the fields of energy management, occupancy detection, predictive maintenance and the development of new working environments are already beginning to bear fruit.

Positive results have also been achieved with the Building Information Modeling (BIM) method, for which Siemens Real Estate has already developed a standard. BIM brings all of the parties involved in a project together at an early stage to produce a digital twin of the building concerned. This digital twin can then be used to optimize the real estate asset across all phases of the product life cycle.