COMM 2293 Winter 2018 Case Scenario for Assignments
For four assignments this semester, you will be creating business documents as
an employee of Rook Property Management Ltd., which manages three local
apartments.
Your supervisor:
Arlene Kreuk, Community Manager, Rook Ltd.
(Arlene.Kreuk@rook.ca)
Your position:
administrative assistant (your.name@rook.ca)
As administrative assistant, you will prepare and respond to routine email, such as requests for
information, claims, and adjustments. You may also write reports or other correspondence.
Contact information:
Rook Property Management Ltd.
700 Scotia Avenue
Dartmouth, NS B3N 1T0
(902) 555-7005
www.rook.ca
About the company:
Rook Property Management Ltd. (Rook) manages Scotia Estates, a group of three apartment
buildings located on Scotia Avenue in Dartmouth.
Rook collects rent from tenants and ensures that the apartments and buildings are liveable.
Each apartment building has ten floors; each floor has 15 apartments of various sizes. Each floor
has a laundry room.
Each building has 100 parking spaces spread over two floors.
One gym, one pool, and one party room are shared by the tenants of all three buildings.
All the apartments are currently being rented; rent includes heat, power, and water.
In addition to you and your supervisor, Rook Property Management employs a residence manager
and nine maintenance workers; when necessary, Rook may hire contractors.
The residence manager and maintenance workers keep the property in good condition, including
heat, water, snow removal, repairs, and renovations.
As community manager, Ms. Kreuk is responsible for coordinating the residence manager,
contractors, and tenants at Scotia Estates.
The three buildings are owned by a company in Ontario that hired Rook to manage the properties.
All three apartment buildings were constructed in 1988.
TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
COMM 2293 Students
COMM 2293 Instructors
February 26, 2018
Assignment 4 Instructions
For this assignment, you will write a two-page, direct strategy analytical report using memo
format.
Who you are: the administrative assistant at Rook Property Management Ltd. (refer to case
scenario)
Who your reader is: Ms. Arlene Kreuk, Community Manager
Background: On behalf of Omni Group, the owners of Scotia Estates, Arlene recently attended the
annual conference of the Canadian Federation of Apartment Associations in Ottawa. At the
conference, some rental property owners presented plans to upgrade their buildings to become
“smart apartments.” Arlene wants to know more about “smart apartments”: what technology is
available, and what the major advantages and disadvantages of smart technology are for building
owners and tenants. She has asked you to research and write an analytical report to help her decide
whether to suggest upgrading to smart technology to Omni Group.
Your task:
1. Use online sources and the library’s databases to find a minimum of three credible, nonacademic sources published within the past ten years to gather information for your report.
Credible sources include national news media, trade journals and magazines, etc.
2. Write a full two-page (plus reference list), direct strategy analytical memo report for Ms.
Kreuk. After your introduction, logically organize the body of the report to discuss the
issues noted above. Conclude your report by summarizing your research, highlighting the
most relevant information for your reader, and justifying your recommended action.
3. Revise your drafts to ensure your message follows the instructions given here, in your
COMM class, and on the checklist.
Referencing your research: Please be sure to correctly acknowledge all your sources using
APA style. Examples are shown in the Business Communication textbook and The Style Guide.
Use your own words to express your thoughts and paraphrase the words and ideas of other
sources. Do not copy any material from the text book, class slides, other students’ work, or
any sources you consult. Do not work with other students on this assignment.
See evaluation criteria on the reverse side of this memo.
Evaluate the completeness of your report using this checklist:
Opening and Introduction (no heading):
□ Use direct strategy in opening to state purpose of report
□ Indicate types of research sources used for the report
□ Preview topics to be discussed
□ State your recommendation
Body:
□ Use “talking” parallel headings
□ Organize topics logically, using transitions and topic sentences
□ Ensure content is clear, understandable, and relevant to your reader
□ Use correct and complete APA style in-text citations throughout
Conclusions and Recommendation:
□ Use functional heading
□ Summarize main points
□ Recommend action (with justification)
□ Include forward-looking close
Professional Business Style and Presentation:
□ Proofread and revise for correctness
□ Use correct short report and memo format
□ Use single-spaced, full block format, 11- or 12-pt font, and a ragged right margin
Citations and References:
□ Ensure all researched material is properly cited in APA style.
□ Paraphrase researched material wherever possible
□ Create correct and complete APA style reference list on separate and final page
Keep a list of your research and sources:
Running head: SMART APARTMENT
1
Smart apartment
Student’s name
Institutional affiliation
Date
SMART APARTMENT
2
From:
To:
Subject: Smart Apartment
Date:
Introduction
What is a smart apartment
Smart apartments are buildings that have been fitted with devices installed to make sense to renters.
Smart apartments have a variety of facilities than those required by single families. The smart
apartments provide renters with the chance of integrating and being able to respond to their
increased rents and lifestyle. They also help to save energy and then collect the useful information
about the population of the residents (Cook et al., 2009).
Advantages of smart apartment
Rook smart apartment encounters many advantages when a home is underpinned by the
digital technology. The ability to personalize lighting of homes and fridges repeatedly reminds us
of the benefits of working towards reality. The advantages stretch further to the improvement of
the impacts of the environment, housing affordability and the health systems.
Health
The health-related smart home has become somewhat common with products connected to the
internet such as the build-in iPhone. This is a health app that has been fitted with a Fitbit that is
vital in tracking physical activities. Beyond the different products, smart home has the underlying
potential of drastically changing the form of healthcare services offered far from the way we know
it. For example, some platforms are making it possible for one to track people and the elderly on
the additional needs and the functions that support the ability and health states of their homes. The
home has increasingly positioned the used sites to deliver the health services that are required
worldwide on the largest population of the aging people. The smart apartment has become critical
in assisting these individuals to live for a long period independently. Research has shown that
smart apartments are beneficial to the society and the individual (Cook et al., 2009).
Security
The implemented devices have become responsible for making homes safe and easily accessible.
Implementation of internet-connected cameras will be critical in enhancing the security of
apartment homes. They are connected with motion sensors on windows and cameras, air-quality
sensors and smoke alarms that can be vital in controlling the security of different homes. My Home
Watch is one of the devices that have been implemented and are used in providing watch over
different forms of empty properties. They also encourage plant watering, pet feeding, mail
collection and virtual monitoring by use of smartphones.
Affordability
Improvement of housing has made it possible for many people to have places where they can
reside. Starts-ups of housing is critical in helping one to experiment the new forms that can be used
for living. In this case, the challenges affecting housing costs are also addressed. The introduction
of new products to the market are making it possible for housing affordability in many parts of the
world and have been improving constantly. The technological uptake has been successful because
it has social, political and cultural mediation that have taken technology to be reliant on the existing
lifestyles (Szewcyzk et al., 2009). They also improve the patterns and aspirations of the occupants.
Leisure
Majority forms of smart apartments have entertainment and leisure issues. They are set on
televisions and audio systems that can manage the different speakers remotely. Some of the
SMART APARTMENT
3
services such as Stan and Netflix have constantly made the apartment technology feel as a
commonplace for many people (Singla et al. 2008).
Everyday convenience
When different people think about the smart apartment, they always imagine about the products
and lifestyle that is automated in blinds of windows so as they can remotely control all heaters.
The smart apartments have programmed the advances made on how to smoothen owner’s patterns.
Technological advances are constantly exciting and will be critical to hassle, save time and
appropriately use the money. There are different business advantages such as Airtasker that allow
use of various tools that require skills and time to increase their job completion and goals
achievement.
References
Cook, D., Schmitter-Edgecombe, M., Crandall, A., Sanders, C., & Thomas, B. (2009, April).
Collecting and disseminating smart home sensor data in the CASAS project.
In Proceedings of the CHI workshop on developing shared home behavior datasets to
advance HCI and ubiquitous computing research(pp. 1-7).
Singla, G., Cook, D. J., & Schmitter-Edgecombe, M. (2008, July). Incorporating temporal
reasoning into activity recognition for smart home residents. In Proceedings of the AAAI
workshop on spatial and temporal reasoning (pp. 53-61).
Szewcyzk, S., Dwan, K., Minor, B., Swedlove, B., & Cook, D. (2009). Annotating smart
environment sensor data for activity learning. Technology and Health Care, 17(3), 161169.
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