The Building Owners and Managers Association of Greater Los Angeles (BOMA/GLA) was established in 1915 to serve both the commercial real estate industry and the community. Today BOMA/GLA is one of the largest of over 95 local BOMA organizations throughout the U.S. and Canada and represents more than 144 million square feet of real estate in Los Angeles County. An important part of the BOMA/GLA mission is to offer quality professional education to its members.
“We wanted our members to have the experience of working through a shelter-in-place program in a real-time fashion,” said Martha Cox-Nitikman, interim executive director of BOMA/GLA. “We selected Attainium for the program because of their SIP content, and we knew they had both the experience and subject expertise we needed. We absolutely got what we needed in the exercise they developed and presented.
“The fact pattern of the session held people’s interest and was challenging,” Cox-Nitikman said. “It covered a range of situations in a condensed time period and it gave participants a chance to move into various issues. In the debriefing session, it was clear that people had come up with different approaches, and the teamwork brought out individual managerial and collaborative styles.”
“The interactive format was very interesting,” said Lia Reyes, parking consultant for LVR Consulting. “I didn’t expect it, and I liked it better than the speaker format of sessions I’ve attended before. We worked in teams to address the problems presented, and, in the debriefing session, it became clear that people came up with solutions that were similar to each other. It was confirming and reassuring to see that we all had made good decisions.”
“We’re pretty good at disaster preparation,” said meeting participant and BOMA/GLA member Eileen E. O’Brien, director of chancery operations for the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, “but I learned that we needed some additional materials for a SIP situation… It also became clear how important communication is in such a situation, whether it’s with first responders, security team, or various people throughout the organization. Attainium did a great job leading people through the scenario, which was very realistic.”
“We got very positive feedback about the session,” Cox-Nitikman said. “People felt that Attainium provided them with all the tools they needed to solve the problems presented. Bob Mellinger [Attainium CEO] is both knowledgeable and professional. Over the three hours of the program, he moves the program along and doesn’t let it bog down. At the end, he wrapped things up with a debriefing in which he raised a number of issues that made a good takeaway – almost a checklist.”
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