BOSTON– The Boston chapter of the International Facility Management Association (IFMA), a non-profit association dedicated to serving the facility management profession, announced the winners of the 2022 Awards of Excellence.
Presented to recipients at the 19th Annual Awards of Excellence event on May 11th, this year’s IFMA Boston awards will take place over lunch at the organization’s signature even—FMForward at Bentley University.
Lori Stewart Coletti Award: John Huntington, CreativeOfficeResources
About the Award: The Lori Stewart Coletti award is given in recognition of service to the Boston Chapter of IFMA that goes above and beyond expectations. Each year, the winner of this award makes a substantial impact on the membership and success of the organization.
2022 Winner: This year’s recipient, John Huntington, has been an integral part of the Logistics committee over the past year. With the influx of virtual programming, John has worked to assure all virtual events are hosted seamlessly and maximizing the ability to break out in small groups. John is always eager to help in any capacity and across committees.
Lifetime Achievement Award: Richard Christiano, CFM, Wentworth Institute of Technology
About the Award: The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to recognize one of IFMA members who has dedicated their career to the furthering of the Facilities Management profession.
2022 Winner: Richard Christiano, CFM has been an IFMA Boston member for more than 20 years.
After a long career in facilities management, Richard turned his attention to teaching the
profession and joined Wentworth Institute of Technology as a professor in 2009. Over the past 13 years, Richard has brought his brilliance to hundreds of students with patience and dedication. He has accompanied numerous trips to World Workplace with the students assuring they can experience all that IFMA and the profession has to offer them. He’s incredibly supportive in writing recommendations and helping students find positions beyond graduation. And he tirelessly works to assure that there is a place for FM within his institution.
President’s Award: Tom Palange, Valmet
About the Award: The President’s Award recognizes an individual who is passionate about what they do—either as a leader from within or outside the IFMA Boston chapter and represents the very best of the IFMA’s core values. This award is selected by the current Chapter President and reflects strong service to the profession.
2022 Winner: Tom Palange has been an active member for the past 12 years. He began his tenure with the chapter as the co-editor of the Chapter’s print newsletter and then went on to chair the Marketing & Communications committee before taking on the VP of Marketing position on the board. Tom has brought his marketing and communications brilliance to the chapter. Under his leadership IFMA has continued to solidify its mission, values, objectives, and key differentiators, which has led to more member satisfaction.
Excellence in Facilities Transformation
The Excellence in Facilities Transformation award is presented to a project team for its work on facilities innovation projects that are “more than meets the eye.”
MathWorks Fault Detection & Diagnostics
MathWorks owns and operates 1.2 million square feet in buildings that range from four to 35 years old. While the company already operates a very energy efficient campus, it sought
opportunities for further improvement at its Apple Hill campus, specifically to identify the blind spots in its HVAC equipment and control strategy. MathWorks wanted a solution that would provide additional insights into its equipment and controls as well as organize the results so that its technicians could easily take action. The company selected a vendor that utilized MATLAB, MathWorks flagship software platform, in its Fault Detection & Diagnostics (FDD) solution. Through this project, MathWorks identified suboptimal system performances and practices that could lead to early equipment failure and decreased operational efficiency. To address this, the company created a process that reviews the output of the vendor-installed system to validate and prioritize issues, and then add the issues to its technicians’ work order system for priority resolution. During the first year of operation, MathWorks was able to identity $130k of actionable energy saving projects as well as many projects that would extend the life of its equipment. FDD also fast-tracked identifying the root cause of various HVAC issues, saving the company’s technicians and vendors time and money. IFMA is proud to recognize MathWorks innovative solution with its Excellence in Facilities Transformation Award.
Excellence in FM: Craig Lizotte
IFMA Boston recognizes the excellence in Facility Management for those involved in its award winning projects. This project team was led by Craig Lizotte of MathWorks.
Excellence in Building Synergies
This award is presented to a project team for its work on a project that brings opposing forces together with creative thinking and innovative solutions.
Amundi Asset Management Americas Headquarters
Amundi was looking to renovate their Americas headquarters in Boston to increase efficiency and collaboration across their teams while showcasing the transformation of the company to a globally elevated entity. One challenge of the project was reducing Amundi’s workplace from five floors to four, which required their staff to adjust to a smaller space. And their work structure also required an increased focus on space planning to enable the seamless team collaboration they were looking for while creating easy pathways for connecting and socializing wider groups.
This project was further challenged by taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which
caused a temporary shut down and ongoing delays.
The team conducted extensive visioning sessions with Amundi’s facility manager and decisionmaking team as well as interviews with each of the department heads. The visioning sessions helped define the intent of their future work environment and their vision for where and how employees could work in the future, as well as helped their leadership challenge the status quo.
The design team took an innovative approach to the project by using a bridge concept to
symbolize Amundi’s global reach and local roots, and by creating areas in the workplace that better enable teamwork and efficiency.
Seamless collaboration between Amundi, their design team and construction team allowed the project to be completed on time and within budget despite construction being briefly shut down due to the pandemic.
Their design team’s integrated approach to workplace strategy and design also saved time and money throughout the renovation because by providing both strategy and design experts for the project, they ensured Amundi’s vision was fully understood and correctly executed.
“We’re proud to recognize Amundi Asset Management’s Americas Headquarters innovative
solution with our Excellence in Building Synergies Award,” IFMA Boston said.
Excellence in FM: Tom Murphy, Amundi Asset Management
IFMA Boston recognizes the excellence in Facility Management for those involved in its award winning projects. This project team was led by Tom Murphy of Amundi Asset Management.
