International. Sofía Benjumea, director of Google's Madrid Campus, spoke to CIFMers about the challenges of managing a 4,000-square-meter space for one of the world's largest companies. First of all, Benjumea explained that the Madrid Campus is a Google space created for entrepreneurs, a space in which entrepreneurs can learn, connect with the entrepreneurial community and work on their projects that we hope will become global companies.
This directly influences the design of Google Campus workspaces. This is stated by Benjumea "mainly should be spaces designed for its users, entrepreneurs, with everything they need, wi-fi, work tables, plugs, open spaces and others more collected for moments of concentration and very important, access to liters of coffee, and in turn, they are spaces designed to facilitate interaction between them so that opportunities arise and community is created".
As for the role of the Facility Manager in the development of workspaces like these, the interviewee pointed out that "Facility Management is the great unknown and although in many companies they begin to give it the importance it should have, it is still commonly confused with 'maintenance' or with 'general services', which in no case comes close to what it really implies".
And he added that "this mentality is changing little by little, because it is now when companies need to innovate more than ever in the use of their square meters: they need to provide inspiring and refreshing spaces to their employees, multifunctional to give them as many uses as possible, and this always combined with being functional and easy to maintain. And that's where the Facility Managers come in."
Sofía Benjumea is part of the group of speakers who will participate in the International Congress of Facility Managers - CIFMers - to be held on September 24 and 25, 2015 in Madrid.
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