Accommodating change ‐ Emerging real estate strategies

Abstract

The pervasive impact of information technology, and the shift to a new economic paradigm has resulted in new ways of working. Successful organisations today are looking for work environments that unlock creativity, support collaboration, and ensure that the ideas of staff and collaborators are absorbed back into the intellectual capital of the organisation. Organisations have changed dramatically, but the physical settings have been slow to respond. The challenge for the real estate market and facilities professionals is to respond to a business model that supports both individual and collaborative working; provides for flexibility of tenure; and affords adaptability of both space use and function. A new real estate offer is emerging that provides both space, services and amenities, to support the tenants business over the life of a customer’s needs. Leading edge developers are now more concerned with creating a diversity of users, by providing space for a symbiotic clusering of firms in specific market sectors with their supporting supplier services and customers. Tenants to respond to continuous change are increasingly looking to reduce the amount of core space they own, with the majority of their portfolio consisting of flexible space on short‐term leases to absorb the demands of individual projects, and outsourced space on a ‘just in time’ arrnagement for support functions. The paper concludes that the property industry today is changing from traders in real estate to an emerging role as value stream integrators and total service providers over the life of the tenant organisation.