BCO Conference, Day One: A brave new world?

The great and good of the property and construction industry have gathered in the delightful city of Madrid for this year’s conference, which is themed “A Brave New World”. So does it feel brave and, for that matter, does it feel new?

Session one saw some notable speakers and after an introduction from chairman Neil Thompson, the stage was taken by Lord Norman Lamont who gave, rather expectedly, a talk around the UK’s economic position and future hope - hang on to that word. Lamont was quick to state that forecasting the future economic situation was equivalent to trying to find a black cat in a dark room when the cat isn’t actually there. But he said the real issue is the continuing lack of bank lending and that the new normal was a growing power by Asia and banks generally remaining restricted in what they can and can’t do.

Lamont was followed by Lord Paul Myners, former Treasury advisor, who cut his speaking time significantly after giving the audience his life story but did make some interesting points more related to property. He also advocated the future need for more residential space in London as people want to live nearer to where they work - or are people actually living at work these days?

Sir Stuart Hampson, chairman of The Crown Estate and former chairman of John Lewis rounded off the session. He spoke with passion about not overlooking opportunities that exist for businesses during tough times and cited a couple that he took at John Lewis, which later transformed the business despite people telling him at the time that he was taking a massive gamble.

After a coffee break we were given an education around trains, planes and automobiles and the relationship between the UK’s transport infrastructure and offices. Lord Adonis (yep, another Lord) kicked off by reminding us all that the average post war tenure of a transport minister was a mere one and a half years - illustrating the point that a lack of joined-up thinking and continuity had rather challenged the UK’s ability to plan efficient infrastructure solutions. Much discussion and debate took place around the vital London airport expansion and the panel, which included Professor David Begg of the campaign for High Speed Rail, was fairly clear that the only viable option is more runways at Heathrow.

Dame Helen Alexander, chairperson of UBM (publisher of Building) and the Port of London Authority, suggested that whilst good transport links to the office were important, they were not the number one and two things on decision making when considering which office to move to. She also made a very good point about the Thames not being used enough to move people around our great capital city – I agree.

The afternoon session moved more towards the office product and Mark Lacey, one of the founding partners of my company Alinea Consulting, chaired a session on current day office buildings and whether they fall into the vanity or sanity category. James Pellatt of GPE made some very good observations and there seemed to be agreement that both were important and that there was space for the iconic and the functional - which don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

The final session of the day, Innovation in Austerity, saw a good debate around whether the industry was doing enough in the area of innovation. Chaired by Jack Pringle, the session saw some interesting observations from a client perspective by Helen Hare of Great Portland Estates and Nick Searl of Argent. While both are well qualified to talk about successful business models, you couldn’t help think that their supply chain should be doing lots more - which is something that the whole industry needs to get to grips with if we are to truly make positive steps forward.

Iain Parker is a founder and partner of Alinea Consulting