Remit's Tenth Anniversary

Remit Consulting celebrated its tenth anniversary with a birthday party at the King's Fund HQ in Cavendish Square, London attended by over 170 guests.

To read more, please click here.

Katie England - budding Olympian

With the 2012 Olympics being a resounding success, and sporting optimisum still in the air, Remit has decided to sponsor a budding 2016 Olympian - Katie England. Katie is a talented show jumper with big plans for the international stage!

We'll be posing regular updates from Katie about her show jumping progress throughout 2013 and you can read her first training post here.

Working Virtually - the hot topic

Working virtually is the ability to work anywhere you want to, not to be tied down by technology or infrastructure.

Marissa Mayer, president and CEO of Yahoo! recently brought virtual working back into the headlines after issuing a company-wide communication ordering all employees to come back into the office to work - a controversial move for some. You can find plenty of articles both praising and criticising her decision, and it seems that this is a hot topic of the moment.

Modus, the regular RICS magazine, recently published a whole issue dedicated to virtual working within the industry. One article, focusing on how the move will affect the property industry, featured Melita talking about how Remit manage flexible working. You can read the article and Melita's contribution here.

Meanwhile, Andrew was also asked to talk about the same topic at a recent TAGtribe breakfast. The attendees had a healthy variety of opinions and a lengthy discussion ensued about the pros and cons of working virtually and the best tools for the job.

If you want to discuss the topic with us, or find out more about how Remit manages working virtually, please get in touch.

New Assistant Consultant

Remit is delighted to welcome a new graduate to the UK team.

Jamie Henderson has been working with us since September 2012 and is now a bona fide member of staff. He is a languages whizz, with a degree in French and Spanish, and a Masters in Real Estate from Kingston University. Jamie hopes to start his APC imminently and we all look forward to working with him in the years to come.

Getting into Property - a Property News article

Steph, one of our Assistant Consultants, was asked last year if she'd be interested in adding to a collection of blogs run by Property News. She is contributing to the graduate surveyor section of the website, and her first post on getting into property has just been published.

Steph talks about how property wasn't her first choice of career, university was definitely not what she expected and how entering the job market in 2009 was far from ideal. The story has a happy ending though.

Read more here.

The BLP Outsourcing Breakfast

Andrew and Melita were delighted to be asked to talk at the most recent Berwin Leighton Paisner Outsourcing Breakfast, held at their London Bridge offices on 17th January.

Melita spoke about Corporate Real Estate outsourcing, its scope and delivery, how it differs from investment outsourcing, and the current trends within the industry, while Andrew talked through our latest REMark results and what they say about the property management services industry.

Attendance levels were fantastic, with plenty of prominent leaders coming out to hear what Remit had to say.

To read Melita's top tips on CRE outsourcing, and Andrew's insights into property management services, click here.

 

REMark results announced

Today saw the release of REMark, our property management services study, at the Berwin Leighton Paisner Outsourcing Breakfast. Following a presentation by Melita on the structure of property outsourcing, Andrew gave an informative talk on the results of the survey to the interested crowd which you can read more about here.

Highlights of the research include:

• Collection figures have improved overall since 2010 – The average collection of rent and service charge has risen by 20%;
• Efficiency figures have also improved, with the average number of leases handled per surveyor up 25%;
• We expect there are more improvements to come as the gap between most and least efficient is very wide;
• The big firms are benefitting from recent investment as JLL, CBRE and Savills – large firms as a whole have better collection performance than small ones;
• Using industry averages, the staffing cost alone should exceed the average fee per lease, wiping out any profit. If property management is acting as the loss leader, it will have little resilience against shocks in the current market.

You can download a copy of the REMark 2013 Summary here.

The full report is only available to participants, but if you want to take part in future REMark surveys, please get in touch.

 

IT in a changing environment - round table discussion

The demand for integrated and automated property systems in the Netherlands and the standardisation of reporting to all main stakeholders has increased significantly over the last couple of years as a result of the continuing economic crisis. The resulting change in IT strategies has thrown up some great opportunities for consulting firms like Remit.

Hans Gerritsen was recently asked to speak on the subject by Vastgoedmarkt (a weekly magazine focused on the Dutch property industry) at a round table discussion. The main topic was the continuing property crisis in The Netherlands and the subsequent consequences of the projected regulatory reporting requirements (like AIFMD, INREV and a like) for fund managers and property investors. 

Each expert spoke on the matter from their specialist point of view and Hans talked about how the tightening of reporting requirements have created a greater awareness around improving and increasing efficiencies in business reporting and analysis for property investment companies. 

You can read the Dutch Vastgoedmarkt article here, or to contact Hans for more information, please head over to our Contact Us page.

 

RICS/Corenet UK Chapter Property in the Economy Seminar

As part of this seminar on Corporate Real Estate on 22nd October 2012, Andrew was asked to facilitate a session where the audience could discuss the use of Cloud technology within our industry.

The audience covered a complete range of familiarity with Cloud computing – on the one hand we had a business owner who telecommuted from Australia; on the other, we heard from people making their first steps into using this technology more effectively. In between, there were many from global companies who were increasingly harnessing this technology to the benefit of users and use of office space.

The discussion showed that Cloud computing is making the jump to being mainstream more quickly than many anticipated.

Berwin Leighton Paisner Outsourcing Breakfast

Melita and Andrew will be presenting at a Berwin Leighton Paisner Outsourcing Breakfast on 17th January 2013.

The presentation will focus on current developments and future trends in outsourcing in the real estate market. Starting with an update on the latest findings from the REMark Survey into property management performance for investors, they will explore how outsourcing differs between the investor and CRE sectors and offer suggestions about what each can each learn from the other.

If you would like to attend the event, please email Jamie Henderson for an invitation.

New UK Directors

Remit is delighted to welcome three new Directors to the UK team:

• Bridget Hardy: government property expert and workplace guru;
• Claudine Rangecroft: business consultant specialising in change management with a wide breadth of experience;
• Neil Webster: public sector expert and keen cyclist.

Neil, Bridget and Claudine have all worked with Remit in the past and present, and we look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.

To find out more about Neil, Bridget and Claudine, please Meet the Team.

 

Competition Winner

Drumroll please! Our competition to guess the skylines and buildings featured on our brand new website was won by...

...Alun Oliver of E3 Consulting!

A bottle of champagne will be winging its way to you soon Alun. We hope you enjoy it.

 

For those who were stuck, the answers are:

• The skyline of Frankfurt
• The Bullring shopping centre, Birmingham
• The Reichstag, Berlin
• Media Harbour, Dusseldorf
• My Zeil shopping centre, Frankfurt
• New Town Hall, Munich
• The Gherkin, London
• Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam
• La Grande Arche de la Defense, Paris
• The Shard, London

Cycling and the Modern Workplace

Many workers now, as well as donning lycra at the weekend, regularly travel to work by bike particularly in London. This is having a significant beneficial impact on their health but also on the workplace. More people are requiring, as a minimum, safe cycle storage, lockers and shower facilities.

Neil Webster, director at Remit, wanted to know what the impact of the rising popularity of cycling was having on the modern workplace. The British Council for Offices took the idea on and developed a research questionnaire, the results of which were published in the report "Cycling and the Modern Workplace" below. The research combined with various online discussions unearthed a number of occupiers and developers who have already responded to the demand by providing buildings which meet the exacting demands of the commuter cyclist. However, retro fitting buildings with shower and storage facilities isn't always easy or cheap.

The research report can be downloaded here.

The report was followed by a BCO event in which Neil chaired a discussion of the same name along with speakers from Deloitte, Lend Lease and Pearson Cycle Specialists.

To find out more, or to discuss the topic in more depth please contact Neil.

 

Competition

To celebrate the launch of our new brand and website, we are running a competition.

The first person to contact us with the names of all ten buildings and skylines featured on the revolving section of our new home page will win a bottle of champagne!

We will announce the name of the winner in 2 weeks time.

Terms and conditions

1. People who are employed by or personally linked to Remit Consulting are not eligible to enter the competition

2. The winner will be the first person to respond and provide a complete answer in the opinion of the judges

3. No purchase necessary

Enter here.

Aspers case study

Aspers had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expand by opening the only large casino to be permitted in London since new legislation in 2005.

"It was a big prize" says Deborah Roil, Development Director of Aspers. However time was tight and Aspers would need help to get it completed on time, and to the best possible quality.

To find out how they achieved it, read our case study.

LaSalle Investment Management Case study

LaSalle Investment Management’s European operation was faced with a challenge: doing more work at the price that clients now demand. This additional work needed to be done by the same number of people: LaSalle needed to increase efficiency.

Find out how they faced the challenge and succeeded, here...

 

 

 

 

 

Olympic torch bearer

Cat Bull, the daughter of Remit Assocate Rod Bull, had the honour of being one of the Olympic torch bearers on 24th June, carrying the Olympic flame through Keighley, West Yorkshire.

You can read more about why Cat was picked to be a torchbearer, and her inspirational story here.

IPF Dinner

On 27^th June, Hans and Thibaud came over from Europe to join Andrew, Mark and Melita at the annual IPF Dinner.

Jonathan Edwards, the current triple jump record holder, Olympic gold medalist and LOCOG Board member, was the after dinner speaker - a break from the usual comedians - and he gave a quietly confident talk about how we all need a goal in life. It was a compelling talk and kept everyone's attention.

We were delighted to be joined by Jenny Mulligan of the Crown Estate, Wynand Bezuidenhoudt from Invesco, Richard Grant of Cadogan Estates, Ryan Perryman from Hammerson and Maqbool Mohamed from CITCO.

Did you spot Andrew in Modus?

If you receive the RICS Modus magazine, you won't have failed to see Andrew Waller's piece this month. With a photo on the contents page, and an imposing double paged spread, Andrew has certainly made a splash (feigning modesty, he says he only realised it had been published when his Mum rang on Saturday morning to say she'd seen it!).

In the interview, Andrew talks to Brendon Hooper about his favourite topic: social media.

You can download a PDF copy of Andrew's piece here. Alternatively, you can view the entire Modus magazine at the RICS website.

Triathlon - The Aftermath

On 25th May 2012 Remit competed in the long-awaited JLL Property Triathlon.

Click here to read about how we got on.

Crossing the Divide - Terrier Article

Neil Webster recently wrote a article on what's next for those who, after spending many years serving the public sector, find themselves out of work. Is consultancy a valid option that should be considered?

Neil's piece was published the Spring edition of The Terrier, the ACES quarterly Journal.

To read more, click here.

Triathlon Training Update 3

With the Triathlon happening this Friday (that came around quickly!), our nerves and worries are starting to kick in.

To find out how our last minute preparations are going, read the final update here.

RICS Management Consultancy Board

Our congratulations go to Andrew and Neil Webster who have both been re-elected onto the RICS Management Consultancy Executive Board this month.

In addition, Melita is also an elected member of the RICS Knowledge Board.

The Boards offer a great forum in which we can discuss our client's issues in a bid to help change and improve our industry.

Getting the ink flowing

We recently invited Fiona Thompson, copywriter and wordsmith extraordinaire, to give a presentation on her top writing tips at one of Remit’s regular Associates Meetings.

To read about the meeting, and her top writing tips, click here.

Triathlon Training Update 2

Now only 2 and a half weeks to go until the JLL Property Triathlon and training is supposed to be in full gear. Unfortunately the weather has been holding some of us back, and we are still pre-occupied with thoughts of cake.

Read our training updates here.

Angus McIntosh joins the team

Remit Consulting is delighted to welcome Dr Angus McIntosh, renowned sustainability consultant, to the team.

Angus has a vast amount of experience within the property investment and sustainability markets, having worked for big firms such as Healey & Baker, Richard Ellis, King Sturge and Jones Lang LaSalle. Alongside this work, Angus regularly contributes articles and reports to organisations such as the Investment Property Forum and the British Council for Offices.

If you think Remit and Angus could help you with sustainability issues, please get in touch.

Triathlon Training Update

The Jones Lang LaSalle Property Triathlon is edging ever closer, and with less than 5 weeks to go we've kicked our training up a level. You can read how we are getting on here.

Newsletter: Spring 2012

Do you receive our newsletters? If not, you won't have seen Andrew's article on Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and how to overcome the problems associated with employees using their personal smartphones and computers for company work.

You can read the newsletter here.

To sign up for future newsletters, contact us and tick the 'Quarterly Newsletter' box.

Remit Consulting Germany

Following a number of changes in our German office, we are pleased to report that Hans Gerritsen will be leading our Remit Consulting organisation as Geschäftsführer in Germany and is looking forward to developing some exciting opportunities this year.

Jenny Solomon and Rudi Römisch found themselves with new opportunities at the same time and have stepped down from the partnership in Germany - we wish them every success in their new ventures. Jenny has returned to being a client and Rudi, who found that he was spending far more time in non-Real Estate management consultancy work, is focusing more of his time in this IT community. Rudi remains a Remit Consulting Associate and both remain firm friends. We would like to thank them for the all the efforts while establishing our brand in Germany

Asset Management Guidelines

The RICS recently released their Public Sector Property Asset Management Guidelines, designed to help public sector organisations manage their estates and services more efficiently.

To find out more about how Remit has contributed, please go here. Or to download the document from the RICS website, please click here.

JLL Property Triathlon

Remit are entering the JLL Property Triathlon for the first time.

Some of us are more enthusiastic and positive than others, but we could all really use some support! If you are going to be there, get in touch as we’d love to meet up (once we’ve caught our breath and found the bar), and if you want to come down to cheer us on you are more than welcome.

Contact us.

Andrew and Bob talk Social Media in the RICS Journal

Andrew and Bob made an appearance in this month's RICS Building Surveying Journal. Interviewed by Les Pickford, they explain how they use Social Media, and the benefits it can reap.

To see a pdf excerpt of the article, please click here.

@issue - Perfect Pitches

We recently invited Adrian Howland, a Pitch and Proposal Consultant, to one of our regular Associates Meetings to present to us the do’s and don’ts of pitching. This is a topic that is close to our hearts as it is vital for our business that we get pitches right.

To read more about Adrian's presentation, click here.

New Joiners

We are pleased to announce that Ho Yei Chow has joined us in the UK as an assistant consultant. Ho Yei is a graduate of Hanze University in Groningen, the Netherlands and Kingston University where she studied for her masters in Real Estate.

Ho Yei joins Steph Yates who joined us in April last year, also as an assistant consultant. Steph is a graduate of Reading University where she studied Land Management.

tREnds 2012

This quarter we focus on our tREnds paper for 2012. This is the sixth year we have been publishing tREnds and this year we've taken a new approach, restricting our predictions to under 140 characters. However a few of our contributors may have broken loose! Read more here.

The Founding of Scope Netherlands

The 3 international rating agencies (Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch) have been under fierce criticism in 2011 after downgrading both financials as well as listed real estate funds all over Europe and America. However, the need to inform investors on the risks of investing in real estate funds is more eminent than ever. So after a few years of feasibility studies, preparation and testing, Scope Netherlands was founded this autumn. Scope rates non-listed Dutch real estate funds mainly for the benefit of private investors. The 2 main products are investment ratings of closed end funds and management ratings. The company is jointly owned by Scope Analysis, a German rating institute from Berlin and Beurswaage, a Dutch fund analysis company.

Remit Consulting Netherlands was advisor from the start of the studies until the incorporation of the company.

Cambridge Property Research Club - 2011/12

The CPRC will be holding its next meeting in February 2012 and the topics will be based on the theme Cashflow and Income Streams. Read more about the Club and the forthcoming event here.

London Olympics - the Physical Legacy

Sadly the tipping point for regeneration collaboration in East London doesn't seem to have been reached. Neil Webster attended the launch of the recent RICS research report -The 2012 Games: The regeneration legacy.

Here, Neil discusses the issues... Read more

Photo: London 2012

Aspers at Westfield Stratford City

We are delighted to have undertaken bid support for Aspers successful tender for the grant of the first Large Casino Licence in the UK at Westfield Stratford City.  It is fantastic to have been involved in such a landmark project.

Steph visited Westfield Stratford City shortly after opening and was surprised to find many units still being fitted out, despite the 95% let rate being advertised a month before opening. Read her thoughts here...

Green Leases

Bob attended a joint IPF BBP seminar on Green Leases in the Docklands. In the linked article he asks 'where are we now?'

Trust, leadership and public asset sharing

It would appear we have reached a “tipping point” in getting the wider public sector to share assets and services. On the same day as REMIT attended the ACES Presidential Conference “Unlocking the barriers to property collaboration in the Public Sector”, the Radio 4 You and Yours programme had a feature on Havant Plaza, the joint Hampshire County and Havant district project.

Some of us had been promoting Total Place principles well before the branded government Capital and Asset Pathfinder initiative came along so perhaps our patience has now been rewarded. What types of initiatives are we talking about? They could include sharing of public assets, sharing of property related services, integrated management teams and moves towards intelligent client models.

If you would like to hear more on this please contact us.

FM Charities Conference

Facility management is facing tough times whilst budgets are shrinking and costs are rising. In the meantime, regulations, health safety issues, risk and environmental concerns are popping up everywhere in our daily work environment. Andrew was given the opportunity to give a talk at the FM Charities Conference in London on how cloud computing could enable organisations to access better software, improve their building management information and encourage flexible working.  This event has given us great opportunity to hear from other FM members about how they have been able to save money or improve their service delivery. Other interesting topics currently in the FM environment are: flexible workplaces, sustainability and risk management.

 

See Andrews' slides from the presentation here...

REMark Survey, Germany

Remit in Germany has been conducting  survey of investors' views about managing agents. Read the summary findings here...

New Director in The Netherlands

We are delighted to announce that Mark Leijgraaff is now a Director of the Dutch practice.

Mark has wide ranging experience, firstly in the asset management and financial sectors and later on from real estate management consulting. Mark has advised some of the largest Dutch asset management companies and retail companies and his project management skills make a valuable contribution to our more complex implementation projects.

IPF Dinner 2011

Jenniffer Solomon came over to join Andrew, Melita and Mark to entertain guests at the IPF dinner.

Read more here...

Remit Netherlands advises on 300mil Euros

Remit Consulting Netherlands has advised Amvest on their finance deal of Euro 320 million.

Read more...

 

Expo-Real 2010 news

 

(The magnificent?) Seven of us attended Expo this year and found a broadly upbeat atmosphere amongst the 37,000 attendees. Fear still remains that flattening yields and scarcity of investments will depress the market in the short term.

Photograph Copyright Messe München GmbH

For more about Expo and photos click here

ERES, Milan 2010 - Forecasting and Redefining workplaces

Bob gave two papers at the conference, chaired a session on Corporate Real Estate and commentated on a Rugby 7's tournament arranged for the edification of the delegates introducing a crowd from all over the world to the "Up and Under" and "a game of two halves".

ERES 2010 had around 450 delegates from all over the world and saw some 300 papers presented over the course of three days.  This makes it the largest real estate conference in the world by some margin. 

The first paper Bob presented, co-authored with Dr Qiulin Ke of Nottingham Trent University, was about redefining workplaces as collections of workspaces and building an appraisal model on that basis. Read the slides...

The second paper, entitled "Making forecasts more holistic", was co-authored with Dr Sotiris Tsolacos of PPR and addresses the problem of identifying market, rather than asset specific, risk and building a model that can overlay specific views of risk on existing forecasts to explore different scenarios.  Both papers will be published in Journals in due course once they have been through the peer review process but the slides are available here.  Read the slides....

 

Federation of Corporate Real Estate Advisers Seminar - 12.05.2010

A Maturity Matrix Can Measure "CRE Competence" Of An Organisation - How High Do You Score?

The FCRE's morning seminar on this topic was at the offices of Allen & Overy in the City. Andrew's presentation compared various approaches to measuring CRE performance and suggested some basic principles and where to start. Andrew's slides are available here or at the FCRE website here.

 

RICS Conference 2010 - Social media paper

RICS Wales National Property Conference, 29th April 2010
RICS South West Property Conference, 9th June 2010

Andrew spoke  about Social Media at these two RICS conferences -  the focus was on understanding the benefits and risks; and where to start managing exposure within these media. For a copy of the slides click here...

Berlin Meeting of immoebs - 21st April 2010

Jenny and Rudi helped Christian Schulz-Wulkow, manager of immoebs Berlin/Brandenburg events and workgroups, to organise the most recent networking event. Read more and see the event photos...

Vesteda launches 350 million euro CMBS

Hans Gerritsen, partner in Remit Consulting in the Netherlands advised Vesteda on the launch of their recent CMBS issuance. Here is a link to the press release.

MIPIM News Survey 2010 Report

Following up our joint survey with The Estates Gazette in 2009, we worked with the EG again this year to find out what the property industry relies on to get its news.

The survey was posted online for 3 days at the end of the MIPIM conference in Cannes. The key findings are that despite property professionals being a traditional lot - they still read their paper journals at the weekend, for example - nearly all types of media are being read. Portals are very popular and Twitter has more than doubled its following since last year. Against this, video has few fans despite excellent content being available.

You can read a summary of the results here.

If you would like a copy of the full report, please contact us.

 

 

MIPIM News Survey 2010

Following up our joint survey with The Estates Gazette in 2009, we worked with the EG again this year to find out what the property industry relies on to get its news.

The survey was posted online for 3 days at the end of the MIPIM conference in Cannes. The key findings are that despite property professionals being a traditional lot - they still read their paper journals at the weekend, for example - nearly all types of media are being read. Portals are very popular and twitter has more than doubled its following since last year. Against this, video has few fans despite excellent content being available.

You can read a summary of the results here.

This is how the Estates Gazette reported the findings.

If you would like a copy of the full report, please contact us.

Lastly, but by no means least, there is a German language summary of the results on our German website here...

tREnds 2010

Through adversity comes innovation - that is the theory. But, in 2009 we found little innovation in the property industry... except, that is, within property companies. The industry as a whole has been concentrating on releasing capital and reducing overheads but, in many parts of the property investment business, standing out is still not a great career move.

Here is our team's yearly round-up of what we think will happen during the next 12 months. Read more...

Snow Business Survey

Monday 2^nd February saw significant snowfall in the South East of England and many people worked from home. We thought it would be interesting to know if working remotely is as effective as being in the office.

We therefore put a short survey on our website and more than 100 people responded. The Estates Gazette ran