The future of work is on everyone’s agenda. This event brings thought leaders together to share cutting edge ideas on the future, from both a people and technology perspective.
It will allow an understanding of the key drivers of change and enablers of innovation that will shape how, where and when work takes place. Our conference programme will explore future technologies, cutting edge award-winning workplaces and people, change and engagement.
And-Co didn't add wellness to a workspace. It built a workspace out of wellness. Founded before the boutique office experience became a trend, And-Co was designed from the intention outward: air, light, acoustics, movement, and community as structural decisions, not afterthoughts. Now BC's only Platinum WELL Certified coworking space and Canada's first WELL Coworking Rated flexible workspace, And-Co's story is a blueprint for what happens when you stop designing for desks and start designing for people.
Organizations obsessively track real estate costs—cost per seat, density, occupancy—while the true drivers of workplace value remain invisible: focus quality, innovation, team cohesion, and learning. With people representing 90% of operating budgets, this measurement gap is costing performance. This session introduces a breakthrough methodology grounded in Professor Robin Dunbar’s Oxford research on human relationship limits. Our brains have predictable thresholds—5 for deep trust, 15 for coordination, 50 for cohesion, 150 for reciprocal relationships—that directly impact team performance in physical space. Recent Gallup data shows manager engagement has fallen 9 points since 2022, and only 12% report AI has transformed work. The bottleneck isn’t technology—it’s the human infrastructure of trust and connection that space either enables or destroys. Discover Social‑Spatial Design’s four‑phase methodology for measurable performance gains beyond occupancy metrics.
Traditional workplace planning based on FTE counts no longer reflects how space is used in a hybrid environment. This session highlights a practical shift toward a more data-informed approach. Today, workplace data is often fragmented and inconsistent, which makes decision-making challenging. We are working to connect occupancy, utilization and BIM data to build a clearer understanding of how space is actually used. While this work is still in progress, early steps are already improving visibility and supporting more informed decisions.
Vancouver’s occupiers are navigating a period of fundamental change—driven by economic uncertainty, uneven growth, evolving workforce expectations, and hybrid work models that are redefining how space is used. As businesses adapt, organizations are rethinking location, lease structure, and space design, reshaping their real estate strategies in the process. This panel explores how workspace is being used as a strategic tool—helping occupiers manage risk, respond to growth or contraction, and experiment with new ways of working—while aligning real estate decisions with broader business priorities to build resilient, talent attracting environments across Vancouver.
Digitizing facilities management now hinges on converting raw building data into operational advantage. This session shows how IWMS, digital twins and live automation feeds can form a unified intelligence layer that reduces downtime, elevates energy performance and exposes how workplaces actually function. Drawing on full‑campus deployments, it demonstrates how AI transforms noisy alerts into targeted action - breaking down silos, tightening resource use and accelerate progress toward high‑performance workplace goals.
Fast‑growing tech companies with distributed teams, remote workers and accelerating AI are rethinking both the office and the operating systems they run on. This session explores the shift from traditional workplaces to “commons”; intentional, clubhouse‑ and coffee‑house‑inspired spaces that support strategy, creativity and culture for global hybrid teams. The speakers will share how this evolution unfolded inside their organisations and why high‑autonomy, high‑alignment models need new governance, rituals and purpose‑driven spaces. The session will illustrate how commons‑style approaches are shaping Vancouver’s workplace culture and innovation districts such as Downtown Vancouver, Granville Island and False Creek Flats.
What does it take to design a workplace that can truly evolve? This session explores ICBC’s relocation to The Hive at 2150 Keith Drive – a 10-storey, 164,000 sq ft mass-timber headquarters in Vancouver’s emerging False Creek Flats innovation district. Designed as one of North America’s most advanced timber office buildings, The Hive combines a striking structural exoskeleton with flexible floorplates, wellness-focused spaces and fully electrified, low-carbon systems. Through a candid, conversational case study, architect and occupier perspectives intersect to examine hybrid workplace strategy, tenant–landlord collaboration and the realities of delivering inclusive, flexible environments.
Innovation ecosystems are particularly sensitive to virtual and hybrid work, and the resulting implications for their cultural, organizational, and physical presence. This session will examine the lessons learned from Canadian biotech and their applicability to the broader economy. In particular, the session will discuss the impacts on adMare BioInnovations’ new facility, in the Mount Pleasant area of Vancouver that has clearly developed into a biotech hub.
HR is hiring aggressively. IT is rolling out new AV in every meeting room. Facilities is cutting square footage. The CEO just posted a new RTO mandate on LinkedIn. Everyone is doing their job. The workplace still breaks. In this short keynote, elia's Alex Sills makes the case for PlaceOps: a new operating model that unifies People, Space, and Tech as one system. If your org still runs the workplace in silos, this one's for you.
Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs), like the new Microsoft Experience Center One in Redmond WA, EC1, are dynamic and exciting spaces where top companies like Microsoft bring their VIP clients, impress them with the latest innovations, leveraging dynamic content interactive collaboration platforms to facilitate non-linear meetings and more personalized communications and connections. We will explore how the ingredients of a great EBC- human centered experience design, interdisciplinary systems integration, personalized automations and aesthetic architecturally integrated technology - can be utilized in our designs to help us build a future workplace that is good for your people, the planet and profit. Let's figure out how to make the workplace a destination worth traveling to.
Work has changed dramatically in the past decade, but leadership systems largely have not. In this talk, Drew Jones explores why many organizations remain stuck in personality-driven and proximity-based models of management that rely on visibility, office presence, and informal power. These systems struggle to scale and break down in distributed and AI-enabled environments. Jones introduces an alternative: system-driven organizations built on a clear Digital Culture Playbook; defining decision frameworks, accountability systems, results-based performance and coaching-oriented leadership. With work coordinated digitally, the office can evolve into something new: the Community Office, a place designed not for routine tasks, but for connection, learning/mentoring, collaboration and shared culture.
After studying the workplace for more than 20 years, Gensler has started asking a new question in its annual Workplace Survey: How do AI “Power Users” differ from late adopters?
The results are surprising, as AI “Power Users” report spending less time working alone, more time learning, and are even finding more meaningful relationships with colleagues at the office. But how can organizations support the new ways of work? To explore this topic, Gensler’s Strategy Director, Kevin Katigbak, will briefly explore the latest survey findings, before facilitating a project spotlight conversation on EllisDon’s new workplace in Richmond, BC, alongside Gensler’s Interior Designer, Youjin Joung, and EllisDon’s Director, Special Projects British Columbia, Candace MacDonald.
As organizations continue to rethink the purpose of the workplace, many are shifting from designing around attendance and efficiency toward creating environments and experiences that better support connection, collaboration, learning and culture. This session explores how intentional gathering, workplace programming and thoughtful experience design can help foster more meaningful interactions in both hybrid and in-person environments.
Vancouver’s progressive, autonomy‑driven culture makes traditional return‑to‑office mandates both ineffective and culturally misaligned. Unlike Toronto’s rapid push back to the office, Vancouver behaves more like Scandinavia—employees expect empowerment, not enforcement. This session explores how People & Culture teams are meeting leadership expectations by creating purposeful moments, curated programming and shared experiences that make the office genuinely worth coming to. We’ll highlight strategies that naturally lift occupancy and show how intentional connection turns the workplace into a meaningful space where diverse people come together.
Content to be announced.
Match Group’s Project H2O brings the company’s brand and engagement ethos into its Vancouver workspace in The Stack. The hospitality‑infused environment combines workplace strategy, wellness and sustainability, using LEED‑aligned materials, energy‑efficient lighting and clear brand cues. The result is a flexible, culture‑rich setting with social hubs and focused zones that support collaboration, wellbeing and meaningful interaction across teams.
Vancouver is moving beyond a downtown‑centric model toward a right‑shaped mix of HQs, spokes and flexible third‑place environments. As organisations demand greater portfolio agility, shorter commitments and turnkey solutions are reshaping leasing strategies. Diverging market dynamics – elevated downtown vacancy and stronger suburban absorption – are accelerating moves into emerging hubs such as Mount Pleasant, the Broadway health sciences corridor and False Creek Flats. Powered by government‑supported innovation zones and a fast-growing biotech ecosystem, these hubs are redefining expectations for lab‑enabled workplaces, creative environments and hybrid‑ready R&D space.
AI and proptech are moving from isolated pilots to the operational backbone of Vancouver’s workplaces, linking building systems with occupancy insights to enable predictive maintenance, targeted energy reduction and more responsive space management. With hybrid work still unsettled and budgets under pressure, workplace leaders must demonstrate to the C‑suite how their spaces are truly performing — from utilisation and team engagement to the effectiveness of the work being done. At the same time, Vancouver’s drive toward zero‑emissions buildings, embodied‑carbon limits and ambitious climate‑action targets is turning building operations into an ongoing cycle of optimisation, carbon management and low‑carbon material choices as standard practice.
With Vancouver’s slower return‑to‑office momentum, compared to Toronto or Seattle, organisations are shifting to hybrid as an operating model built on clear rhythms, leadership alignment and a purposeful in‑office experience. The focus is on persuasion over mandates, using hospitality, community‑building and wellbeing‑centred design – choice‑based settings, quiet refuge, sensory zoning, daylight and acoustic comfort – to draw people in. A broader Canadian design reset is also reshaping briefs; democratic co‑creation, locally sourced materials and Indigenous‑led, reconciliatory approaches. Together, these values create workplaces that signal belonging and identity. Culture, not compliance, drives occupancy.
