IPD OCCUPIERS - REAL RETURN NEWSLETTER
APRIL 2010

In this Newsletter...

Setting the Standards for Government Property

European Standards for Real Estate and Facilities Management

Space Use Under the Microscope

Talking Strategy

Occupier and Landlord Pendulum Swings Back Towards Equality

Setting the Standards for Government Property

Richard Graham, Head of Property Performance Improvement for the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), speaks to Real Return about the dependence on and the value added through property benchmarking and performance data to UK Central Government Departments.


IPD had now been working in partnership with OGC since 2005 to deliver benchmarking services on office properties occupied by central government departments and their agencies. The OGC has established and championed this process as part of its role in supporting government to get the maximum value from what it spends. "There is no more important task for us than the delivery of first class public services at the best possible value for money," explains Richard Graham, "including the use government makes of the property it occupies. Government departments are responsible for managing their own property portfolios within the Government's seven year estates transformation initiative, High Performing Property (HPP), overseen by the OGC." Read more >>

European Standards for Real Estate and Facilities Management

Herman van Ree, Head of Corporate Services at IPD Occupiers explains the importance of these new standards for all who use real estate in Europe.

Over the last five years the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) has been working hard to develop a number of European Standards for real estate and facilities management. These standards are of key importance to European occupiers and bodies like IPD who measure their performance, focussing as they do on definitions, agreements, quality, taxonomy, processes, space and not least benchmarking. In this article we provide you with a brief update on their current state of development as well as what this year is likely to have in store.

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Space Use Under the Microscope

Real Return speaks to Alan Squires of GlaxoSmithKline, one of the participants in IPD Occupiers' Lab space benchmarking pilot project.

Over the last six months IPD Occupiers has been working with ten pharmaceutical organisations to help them classify and analyse their laboratory space, with a view to future performance benchmarking and increasing occupational efficiency in this specialist area of operational property. The pilot project brought together the participant firms, who also included Pfizer and other pharmaceuticals, to work out a common typology for classifying their lab space - which is set to make benchmarking on a comparable basis possible for the first time.

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Talking Strategy

Lynda Shillaw, Managing Director Co-operative Estates, will be taking the role of chair at the IPD Occupiers Property in Business Conference on June 24th 2010. Here she speaks to Real Return about her work since joining the Co-operative Group in 2006.

Shillaw is responsible for all of the organisation’s property holdings, including its extensive portfolio of retail outlets in areas such as food, financial services, travel, funerals and healthcare, as well as its offices, farm land and ‘traditional facilities’. She also manages the Co-operative Group’s renewables investments and is responsible for managing its energy efficiency programme, as part of her remit for procurement of the Group’s corporate consumables. She spends about 50% of her time focusing on property activities, including a significant investment portfolio which also undertakes development projects.

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Occupier and Landlord Pendulum Swings Back Towards Equality

James Wallace, IPD Global Press Officer, speaks to Glenn Corney, Director at IPD Occupiers, about the effect of the economic roller coaster on the landlord-tenant relationship.

One modest advantage some occupiers seized on during the recession was the opportunity to negotiate more flexible lease terms as landlords sought to stave off vacancies and the threat of empty rates. But as direct property markets rebounded – and the UK economy showed signs of emerging from recession – over the final quarter of last year, the balance of power between landlords and occupiers has started to even out.

Read more >>

IPD OCCUPIERS PROPERTY IN BUSINESS CONFERENCE

24 June 2010, London

To register click on the link below.

IPD CODES/GEMS

Please click below to view IPD's Global Estate Measurement Standards

IPD ENVIRONMENT CODE

IPD COST CODE

IPD SPACE CODE

VALUE FOR MONEY

Finding the balance between COST and QUALITY of facilities management

For more information
visit our website

IPD Occupiers - UK Corporate Membership package

Designed to provide you with a balanced view of your real estate portfolio and to make the most of the information available.

For more information visit our website