Over two years independent: what ten engagements had in common

Over the past two years I’ve worked on ten engagements as an independent consultant. On paper they look varied. Some were interim roles, where I stepped into an organisation for a period. Others were advisory, delivered directly or as an associate of Remit Consulting. The clients ranged from a listed REIT and a global investor to a family-owned estate and a youth arts charity.

Looking back across them, the variety is smaller than it first appears. The same few questions kept coming up.

What does it actually cost, and can we defend it?

Four of the ten were, at heart, about fees. A property management division whose fees had been inherited and rarely reviewed. A London estate rebuilding its fee model to comply with the new RICS Service Charge Code. A global investor wanting comparable fee data across nine European markets. A pan-European review of service provider capability and cost.

The common thread was fees set some time ago, often by people no longer in the business, and rarely tested against what the service actually costs to deliver. The new Code makes that harder to ignore, because the management fee now needs to reflect the cost of managing the services. Answering the question properly means working through the numbers and the operation together. One without the other gives you a figure nobody can explain.

Change is where the risk sits

Most of the work happened around a change: a new managing agent, bringing a service in-house, a new operating model, a new property management system, a new leadership team.

The plans were usually sound at the top. The risk sat in the detail. What exactly had a new provider committed to in its tender, and what was qualified? What data needed to move, and who owned it? Which decisions had been made, and which had only been assumed? On one transition, simply separating firm commitments from hedged ones changed the tone of every steering meeting that followed.

Knowledge that lives in people

In one engagement we documented around 150 processes. In another, 61 process maps were updated ahead of a system change. In a third, current processes had to be mapped before a Yardi roadmap made any sense.

In each case the business worked. But how it worked was held by a small number of people. Writing it down is not bureaucracy. It is what allows a business to price its services, configure a system, hand over to someone new or recover when a key person leaves. I wrote about this earlier in The knowledge that walks out, and the last two years have only reinforced it.

Decisions that hold up

The useful output was rarely a report. It was a decision someone could stand behind: a board agreeing a Target Operating Model, a management team agreeing a fee uplift, an investor pitch the partners were comfortable presenting, trustees with a clearer view of risk.

That changes how the work is done. Options have to be tested against how the operation actually runs, and the recommendation has to be one that the people who live with it can defend.

What clients needed

Almost every engagement started at a point of pressure. A regulatory deadline. An investor meeting. A contract coming to an end. Senior people leaving at the wrong moment.

What clients needed in those moments was fairly consistent. Someone who could get up to speed quickly, understand both the operational and the financial side, work calmly with the people involved, and leave something that still works after they have gone.

That is where my own background has proved most useful. I’ve spent over 25 years in commercial real estate, including leading property and facilities management teams at JLL and Montagu Evans, and I’m qualified as both a chartered surveyor and a chartered accountant. Most of the problems above sit across the line between operations and finance, and between the people doing the work and the board making decisions. Being comfortable on both sides of that line has mattered more than any single area of expertise.

Looking ahead

None of these questions are unusual. Fees drift. Transitions get underestimated. Knowledge concentrates in a few people. Decisions get deferred until the pressure arrives. The organisations that handle them well tend to ask the questions a little earlier.

If any of this sounds familiar, I’m always happy to talk it through.