Creating a Real Estate Program [Intro]: A series of posts on what it takes to do it right.

Welcome friends and strangers to the first of seven posts on Creating a Real Estate Program. Over the past few months of conversations, I have heard a common refrain from real estate consultants, corporates, service providers, and technology companies: real estate occupiers have data, they know generally what needs to be done, they may even have a mandate to get things done, but too many companies struggle to move from Ideas to Strategy to Program to Delivery.

Most real estate pros excel at one or more of Ideas, Strategy, and Delivery. Give us a project concept and we can run from start to finish with a high degree of success for even the most difficult, complex, political project imaginable. It is what we do. Where the struggle exists is in creating a 3+ year program of possible projects, costs, and benefits that can be wrapped up in a business case and taken to the CFO, COO, CEO, and Board to get approval on.

The problem with a 3-year real estate program of projects is that it is going to be wildly inaccurate around the list of projects that will be included. Every year will have unforeseen forced relocations, market opportunities that came out of nowhere, projects that fall apart because reality blew apart the forecast, and the natural ups and downs that come with even normal projects. Building a comfort within the real estate team to take a long range forecast to the C-suite is a challenge. Preparing that real estate team to defend it to the C-suite is even harder. There is so much unknown and unknowable that far in advance.

Yet, that is what is necessary get a real estate change program approved. You want the funding to materially move your real estate portfolio from where it is to where it should be in anything less than 20 years? You need to quickly get comfortable with a lot of flexibility and statistics.

There are many reasons you could need a multi-year real estate program:

• Merger or Acquisition event that is large enough to require material real estate change.
• Too much space for your current occupancy levels.
• Leadership looking to invest in new designs and workplace technology but need a short payback period.
• Organizational transformation event (global workforce strategy plans, new hybrid work policy, general cost efficiency targets, etc.).
• Or just that leadership is focused on real estate and wants to see change to reflect the current ways of working.

With all that, this series is intended to go through the steps of what it takes to stand up one of these programs. I have stood up $500m in benefits worth of these programs throughout my career (ranging from $10m to $150m). Every single one had some new wrinkle that had to be taken into account. Every single one used a different financial metric as the primary KPI. Every single one calculated savings differently. But, critically, every single one met its delivery target.

Across these posts I will cover:

1. Setting (realistic) goals for your program
2. Building a forecast of your opportunities (sometimes with a crystal ball)
3. Crafting a business case from these opportunities (with appropriate contingencies)
4. Iterating (over and over and over and over….) on the business case
5. Selling the program to leadership (it won’t happen on the first or second trip)
6. Getting approved to actually deliver (the fun stuff but with 60% less fun)

This only gets us up to the point where you have an approved program. It does not get easier from there. As already acknowledged, the projects comprising your program will begin changing within the first couple of months after approval of the program. You will need to adapt, modify, adjust, and dance every single month from there until the end to keep the program on track. You will need to push, prod, and force the business to get in line on every project. You will need to support your delivery team weekly on roadblocks from the same people expecting you to hit your program targets. But all that comes afterward.

First, we need to get you to the point of having that approved program.