Following the Fireside Chat with Mayor Nutter interviewed by John Grady, ULI Philadelphia hosted a panel discussion titled “Resilience and the Future” at the Annual Real Estate Forecast 2022. This panel was moderated by Saleem Chapman, Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Philadelphia. Panelists included Ariella Maron, CEO & Principal of Lion Advisors for Community & Environment; Jim Kurek, Vice President and Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at Brandywine Realty Trust; and Peter D’Antonio, Vice President and Director of Business Development at Hunter Roberts Construction Group.

This panel focused on the changes, disruptions, and threats affecting the future of the real estate industry. With panelists representing the supply chain, technology, sustainability, and equity sectors, a wide range of issues on resilience in infrastructure, cybersecurity, equity, and sustainability were covered.

Peter D’Antonio presented the challenges to the nation’s supply chain as one of Philadelphia’s largest issues. D’Antonio shared his concerns on how supply chain delays impacted schedule delivery and material custody all of which disrupted the workforce. The supply chain disruption also impacts the construction workforce despite the help wanted signs everywhere. Construction jobs are especially vulnerable as there is less work from home options than other sectors

D’Antonio provided real life examples where a delayed cargo shipment is preventing installation of specialty glass from atop one of the city’s skyscrapers and also described lead times of up to one year for large steel deliveries. D’Antonio still has confidence in Philadelphia’s ability to pull through this difficulty. To build more resiliency, he suggests operators consider using design-assist professionals during their planning process and ordering materials as soon as decisions are made to protect buildings and the investment.

Jim Kurek discussed the cybersecurity threats Philadelphia faces during the pandemic. The key problem that concerned Kurek were the many standard operating procedures thrown out the proverbial window during and after 2020, in large part due to the workforce migration to the virtual infrastructure.

Remote work presented different challenges to the city’s systems. As an example, Kurek described how the risk footprint for most organizations completely changed due to human behavior online. A key concern is the shifting “attack vectors”, the path that a hacker takes to exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities, have increased as a result the increased number of families interacting within the same ecosystems as organizations.

Jim Kurek suggested cyber resilience will improve for our city.  Tech is a tool, and it works better when it is able to provide benefits in a thoughtless way. Meaning, the fewer inputs the user must make, the more successful it will be, stated Kurek. When end users are having a simple experience security increases.

Ariella Maron focused the discussion on how climate and how its stressors affect commercial real estate. She notes how COVID laid bare our intersections with race, class, health and spaces. Maron reinforced the message that Philadelphia needs to transition away from fossil fuels. Voicing concerns of the escalating tropical storm intensity as a looming threat, Maron used as an example the rising Schuylkill River incidents earlier this year, as an indicator that where we develop can be as important as what. Awareness in development is key.

Peter D’Antonio pointed out that sustainable air systems, passive houses and buildings moving away from gas is a shift that will help battle climate change. He also noted that LED & Daylight harvesting improve building efficiency he hopes to see more operators prioritizing them. Jim Kurek felt leveraging Fresh Air intakes to reduce the load on the buildings’ HVAC systems was another tweak in design that promotes healthy buildings

Ariella Maron voiced her concern that while all that may be true, poorer communities are living in inefficient and structurally unsound housing. All of this will lead to disparaging outcomes across the city

When asked to provide final thoughts on resiliency, Ariella Maron kept her focus on people, their needs & rights to safety, clean air, affordable housing, and their future. Future disruptions may not necessarily come from the same sources but will present similar challenges. Disruptions to supply chains, jobs and daily life will be present if we do not focus on people. Jim Kurek considered the ‘Great Resignation’ in part was due to work-life balance issues in the workforce. Addressing that imbalance itself is the key challenge with regard to making the sector more resilient. And Paul D’Antonio observed that education is needed to create self-sufficiency, and that manufacturing must be brought back stateside as a key to healing our supply chains to make them more resilient.

Contributed by Sigourney Young. Sigourney Young is a student of Business Management at Jefferson University. She is an associate at ULI Philadelphia.