Incendium were engaged with a leading international science and professional service firm, whose portfolio comprised of 227 properties spanning 60 countries, to solve the following problem:

“Our portfolio is incredibly varied, our offices are outdated and underutilised, and we are struggling to get employees in the office. We needed to modernise, inject agility and make our portfolio more efficient.”

Our approach

Incendium defined and communicated new ways of working principles, enhanced employee experience through refreshed, modern workspaces, and introduced robust property processes through a governance playbook.

We installed a global transformation team (3.5 FTEs) accountable for running a fully outsourced property function. The team is responsible for the end-to-end delivery of transformation operations covering all aspects of property, including:

• Data, reporting and tracking,
• Transaction management and business cases,
• Management and oversight of transaction brokers and agents,
• Co-ordination with Instant on flex transactions,
• Operate approvals and governance processes.

We developed and executed ‘fixed to flex’ strategy following key business drivers:

• Modernise an underutilised property portfolio,
• Repost to demerger requirements,
• Attract, retain and enable talent,
• Inject agility into workplace,
• Rationalisation and costs savings.

Outcomes

• The team reduced the number of properties in the portfolio by 48% in two years and achieved a 60% reduction in total space.
• We oversaw the completion of 65 property sales, moves and exits and rebalanced the conventional portfolio to agile, flexible space which reduced the average lease length to 2.2 years.
• As a result, the client achieved a cost reduction of over £16m (59%) and a corresponding carbon reduction.