Strategic Property and Workplace Projects

We’re a truly flexible and agile team dealing with Strategic Property and Workplace Projects.  Based around the country, we have the technology, capability, know how (as well as the benefit of the rest of Capita Symonds’ vast resources) to be able to service any client, no matter where they are based.

David established the current Consulting team in 2007 after joining Capita Symonds from the BBC where he had spent over 20 years working in a range of property related departments including FM, project management, portfolio management with responsibility for a large part of the UK estate, before finally moving onto client side sponsorship of a number of their major developments at White City in London, The Mailbox in Birmingham and at MediaCity in Salford

Since joining Capita Symonds, David has recruited a team of like minded individuals, many having been employed in senior positions within occupier real estate/property departments and who have worked together for a wide range of public and private sector clients.

David’s many years of occupier experience and expertise has helped the company develop the four key services offered by the team.  David has a particular passion for:

• Leadership of major projects, particularly throughout the inception and development stages
• Strategic property and workplace reviews aligning the requirements to the business needs where significant savings are realisable through optimisation of accommodation,
• Workplace Solutions: developing creative, flexible, efficient and productive workplaces that enable agile working

Key Skills:

• Understanding occupiers needs relating to property & workplace
• Developing property strategies aligned to business needs
• Creating flexible workplace solutions

Mark Bradshaw

Mark Joined Capita Symonds in 2007. Prior to this he held portfolio management and leadership roles within BBC Workplace for 12 years, with responsibility for portfolio planning, investment and occupier management across its England, Wales and Northern Ireland portfolios.

Marks’ particular skills lie in the leadership and development of strategic accommodation and workplace solutions for large organisations and providing strong leadership in their delivery. His clients are from both the public sector and private sector.

Recent projects include the development of the agile working strategy and solution for Network Rail’s new National Centre in Milton Keynes and the development and implementation of agile working across their vast UK portfolio within Manchester, Glasgow, Birmingham and London.  Other projects include the ‘Working for the Future’ Business Transformation Programme for Birmingham City Council; where Mark held the role of Solution Architect and Programme Manager.

His experience and approach to delivery has earned him wide recognition as a subject matter expert in his field, focused on delivering results for his clients that add value.

Key skills:

• Client side leadership and support
• Strategic property analysis and planning
• Business needs driven workplace solutions, introducing agility and new ways of working
• Programme, communications and stakeholder management 

Peter Jones

Peter joined Capita Symonds in 2008, having previously worked as management consultant for CORPRA, BT Global Services and BT Workstyle Consultancy Group.

Peter has developed and led change programmes for organisations that include the London Borough of Barnet, London Borough of Brent, London Borough of Lewisham, Bournemouth Council, Network Rail, Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), Powergen and BT. 

Peter is passionate about organisational and individual change and the potentially positive synergies between the two within the workplace and beyond. His approach is focused upon the identification, measurement and practical realisation of benefits for his clients. He has helped clients win awards and recently won the Management Consultancies Association Change Management Award for his work on the AAT Value chain, performance management and executive development. He has also appeared on Radio and TV as an expert on the benefits and implementation of flexible working.

Most recently Peter has been involved in the delivery of the engagement to support the implementation of the Agile Working Programme across Network Rail’s UK office portfolio.

Peter also supported Thales UK in the design, development and delivery of a behavioural change programme to support the introduction of ‘Smarter Working’ within the National Security and Resilience Division. The programme enabled the closure of a site in Somerset and co-location on sites in Bristol and Basingstoke, plus behavioural change and management training to support new skills needed to compete in their rapidly changing marketplace.

Key Skills

• Change management
• Organisational development
• ICT
• Sustainability
• Process mapping
• Workplace strategy
• Agile working
• Flexible working implementation

Jo Hall

Jo joined the Capita Symonds team in 2011 with a wealth of estate rationalisation, project leadership and agile working experience. Jo specialises in working with organisations to define, develop and deliver workplace strategy and rationalisation programmes that are aligned with their business objectives. She has a successful track record of leading the vision and delivering the behavioural impacts of transformation, alongside delivering workplaces to meet the strategic needs of the business.

Most recently Jo has led on providing workplace solution and behavioural change support for Network Rail and project leadership and change management services for Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust. Prior to this, Jo had responsibility within the Estates Directorate at the Ministry of Justice, where she was integral to the delivery of the rationalisation of the estates by 70% within London. She has gained experience across estates management, facilities management, project/programme management and change management roles. 

Key Skills:

• Development of property strategies and their delivery
• Delivery of the business case and benefits realisation plans
• Stakeholder engagement at a senior management level as part of change programmes
• Successful delivery of the change management strategy
• Strategic management for property acquisitions, disposals, lease administration and building regulations

Simon Raper

Simon has joined Capita Symonds from S2F Pty Ltd, an Australian based Architectural practice where Simon was employed as a Project Director, leading a multi-disciplined team of Architects, Interior Designers, Mechanical, Electrical and Process Engineers across a range of large scale, creative and often technically complex projects. Simon’s experience helped him to deliver a major capitol project for the Australian Department of Defence with a value of $2Billion.

Simon has almost 24 years experience across the fields of Architecture, Interior Architecture + Design, developing a creative and fluid approach to the delivery of strategic workplace solutions, change management and business consultancy services. Working across a number of sectors, including Commercial Office, Education, Healthcare, Laboratories, Pharma and Defence.

Key Skills:

• Understanding a client and their key business needs and objectives
• Developing clear strategic client briefs, based on evidenced based data and an in-depth knowledge of the clients business operation
• Developing strategic workplace and property strategies to enable key business objectives to be delivered
• Developing and delivering new ways of working across a range of projects and sectors
• Providing client side project leadership and direction, managing the process of change

Sameer Shrestha

Sameer joined Capita Symonds in July 2009 from British Airways where he was Property Strategy Manager responsible for ensuring British Airways property strategy aligns with business requirements.

Sameer has extensive experience of providing strategic property and management consultancy services to corporate occupiers, Local Authorities, NHS Foundation Trusts, Councils, Local and Central Government. 

He specialises in the development of long term property strategies including estates rationalisation to deliver not just a reduction in property operating costs but also contribute towards carbon reduction targets.

Sameer recently supported Birmingham City Council (BCC) on their ‘Total Place’ pilot study to improve the services provided to the citizens of Birmingham by BCC and its key partners at lower cost. He also advised Swindon Borough Council & PCT on the formulation of their localities strategy incorporating New Ways of Working (NWOW) and Property Strategy.

He recently advised Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust on estates rationalisation to deliver £2m annual savings in property operating costs.  This review identified a potential to improve occupation densities, utilisation, rationalisation of the portfolio and introduce new ways of working.   

He also provided strategic advice to Capita Group Plc on the development and implementation of property strategy, related to acquiring 13 car pound sites across the UK, to deliver the newly won contract from DVLA.

He is a highly motivated and experienced property professional with in-depth experience of delivering improvement in business performance through the rationalisation of property portfolio including implementation of best practice workplace solutions.

Key skills:

• Strategic advice on aligning property with corporate strategy
• Strategic advice on development proposals
• Project and programme management
• Improve business performance through rationalisation of property
• Implementation of best practice workplace solutions
• Financial analysis
• Managing complex stakeholder negotiations

Kevin Lane

Kevin joined Capita Symonds Consulting in 2008, having been involved in Leisure Management for over 20 years, managing facilities in both the public and the private sectors. Prior to working for Capita Symonds, he was the national programme manager for both Quest (a UK wide quality assurance scheme) and the National Benchmarking Service (business improvement tool through performance comparison), on behalf of the home country sports councils; schemes which have continuous improvement as their focus.

After a short stay with the Sport, Leisure and Culture Consultancy team at Capita Symonds, he branched out into the wider field of Business Transformation, focussing much of his attention on working with Sheffield City Council to introduce Workstyle into a pilot building, increasing its capacity from 500 to nearly 750.

Always an advocate for finding ways to improve, he combines his ability to link workstreams together, through a close attention to detail and a natural ability to communicate. Much of his work involves engagement with the workforce; analysing, consulting and listening. As a real example of an agile worker, he practises what he preaches, advocating that new ways of working are not just about property and costs savings, but also about improving people, processes, organisations and service.

His consultancy work ranges across the public, private and third sectors in local government, defence, health, housing, sport, leisure and culture.  They have included work with clients as diverse as: county/city and unitary/local councils, PCTs, quangos such as London Development Agency, Sport England, and Arts Council England, private sector organisations, housing and leisure trusts, universities and the National Coal Board.

Key Skills

• Communications, engagement and consultation
• Training, presenting and facilitation of agile working change projects
• Project and bid management

Dave Cordy

Dave joined Capita Symonds in 2008, having previously worked as a management consultant with CORPRA, an independent consultancy and before that with BT.

Dave has more than 15 years experience helping organisations change the way they work and adopt new more ‘agile’ ways of working. The foundation for this expertise was as a leading member of BT's successful Workstyle Consultancy Group and he maintains an interest in technologies that support how people can work effectively away from the office.

As a passionate advocate of ‘Agile Working’ and sustainable work practices, Dave understands the strategic interplay of the workplace, the employee, enabling technology and the environment; and their ability when combined, to deliver a more effective and sustainable organisation. His empathic and affable nature coupled with a professional, focused approach enables him to communicate at all levels within client organisations.

Recent projects include the development and implementation of the engagement strategy for Birmingham City Council’s ‘Enabling Agile Working’ programme, engagement and education of a variety of staff involved in an office relocation and introduction of the ‘Smart Working’ programme at Thales UK Ltd, developing the business case for the implementation of ‘Smarter Working’ at the London Borough of Sutton, developing the monitoring and analysis standards ‘Energy Efficient Whitehall’ projects relating to the effectiveness of employee engagement and behavioural change associated with energy reduction in Central Government.

Key Skills

• Developing and delivering Agile Working engagement strategies.
• Developing and delivering workplace behavioural change strategies
• Workshop development and facilitation skills
• Communication & negotiation skills
• Organisational and personal change management expertise
• Project management.

Martin Haynes

Martin joined Capita Symonds in June 2008 and immediately took up the role and responsibility for client-side monitoring of the BBC’s accommodation at MediaCityUK, Salford and also development and implementation of the Cat ‘C’ fit-out plan.

Previous roles included Delivery Manager for the BBC on the workplace projects in the BBC’s W12 estate, delivery of a number of world class research facilities for the University of East Anglia and British Telecom, where Martin managed construction projects in their Yorkshire and Humberside estate.

With a degree in both Building Surveying and Construction Management and a member of the Association of Project Managers, he has well rounded experience in media, telecoms, local authority, education and health sectors.

Martin is currently working alongside Capita Group who have recently been successful in the re-tender of the management of the TV License and is working to develop programme plans for the 11 separate workstreams through the migration period, rationalisation of accommodation and into contract implementation.

Key Skills:

• Programme and project implementation 
• Project management
• Communication, negotiation and organisational skills

Peter Hayes

Peter is our team coordinator. With a background in property administration, he provides vital support to the team.  Based in London, he is often the first person in the team you will make contact with. As our team coordinator, he is able to put you in touch with the right person to help you with your request and has access to the teams’ diaries.