Scott Salmirs: a man who knows his real estate. (Profile of the Week: Scott Salmirs).

Scott Salmirs, former senior vice president of Lehman Brothers, has just joined American Building Maintenance Co., a subsidiary of ABM Industries, Inc., as its executive vice president.

Salmirs joined ABM with over 15 years of experience in commercial property management, development, and construction at the highest levels of corporate America, including Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Prudential Securities.

In his most recent position at Lehman Brothers, Salmirs was the head of corporate real estate for North and South America, where he was responsible for the firm's property management, leasing, and design and construction groups. He also oversaw the purchase and management of their Jersey City office, their headquarters at 7th Ave., and their data center on 10th Ave.

That project, said Salmirs, "was a seven day a week job for a year. After September 11th, they went from two million SF of office space to 300,000 and we had to find space for 8,000 people."

Before Salmirs joined Lehman, he managed Goldman and Sachs' four million SF real estate portfolio in the U.S. and was responsible for the design and development of their 1.5 million SF office tower in Jersey City. Prior to that, he was employed by Insignia/ESG as director of property management.

However, Salmirs began his career in real estate "by accident."

After being hired by Prudential Securities Real Estate Investment Bank as a financial analyst, he quickly moved up, being promoted to the position of asset manager.

"It didn't matter that it was real estate," said Salmirs, who was hired for his financial skills. "But then it took a life of its own."

Now a real estate veteran, he hopes to offer a "fresh approach" to the business.

"I can bring in an owner's point of view as opposed to just a contractor's," said Salmirs. "I can say yes, I know where you're coming from and what you're saying, because I also have 15 years of corporate real estate experience."

In announcing Salmirs' appointment, Henrik Slipsager, ABM Industries' president and chief executive officer, said, "Everyone at ABM is very excited about the level of professionalism that Scott brings to our team. We are looking forward to drawing on Scott's familiarity with the business and insight from the customer's perspective to reinforce ABM's position as the leader in this field."

Salmirs said he has a great deal of respect and appreciation for the people he's worked with.

"I think there's tremendous opportunity for growth because of the teams we're putting together," he said. "We're hiring people with corporate and management backgrounds. Our goal is to be considered more sophisticated."

Salmirs also added that he feels he has achieved his success from "treating people with dignity and respect."

"For me, in my career, the individual always comes before the business. Back when I was an owner, if I called someone they called me back in four seconds. When I became a vendor, people cautioned me and said 'we'll see who returns your calls now.' But I've been delighted to find out that people are returning my calls."

In his new role, Salmirs is being kept quite busy by ABM,s quality-of-life endeavors, including working to achieve an I.S.O. 9000 certification for one of their properties.

"We're piloting a program to achieve the certification, because that's synonymous with excellence. To get one, your systems have to be the best, your operations have to be the best, the tenants have to think you're the best. We just held a seminar on SARS and how to deal with it. We got a tremendous response. We also put out a manual of processes we do to service the tenants, and no one else has done this in the cleaning industry."

The goal, Salmirs said, is to "grow and strengthen our businesses within the Northeast region."

The expanding company has more than 62,000 employees and collects over $2 billion in annual revenues. It is one of the largest facility services contractors listed on the New York Stock Exchange. ABM Maintenance Co. is the parent company of ABM Janitorial, Ampco System Parking, ABM Engineering, American Commercial security, Amtech Lighting, Amtech Elevator, CommAir Mechanical, and ABM Service Network.