Disney integrates facilities and CRE

The Walt Disney Company is challenging traditional thinking among major corporates on the structure of corporate property services by integrating its facilities management and property operations across the UK. It hopes to replicate this across Europe.

Describing facilities and corporate real estate as 'siamese twins', vice- president of corporate real estate at Disney, Chris Kane, told delegates to the recent Property Forum conference that the move meant merging 'very different philosophies'.

The newly integrated division is based at Disney's Hammersmith Centre West UK headquarters, which houses 1,200 staff.

Kane told TheFB that across corporates generally, integration of property and facilities has been held back by the outmoded attitude of chartered surveying towards facilities management.

'It's the pinstripe suits versus the boiler room,' he said. 'The problem exists across the world and it is flawed thinking because at the end of the day you have got to provide an integrated solution.'

At Disney, steps towards an integrated approach have taken place over the last year. 'We have made a big step forward to say we will be one team,' he said. 'We realised we needed to change, that the world had moved on and that we needed to better serve the company.'

A more integrated approach has seen the facilities team involved in building selection and reviewing specifications for new buildings.

'It's about realising that there is more [to buildings] than rents,' said Kane. To make integration work, 'you have to have a body of like-minded people who can see the benefits,' said Kane. 'I tell our guys that we are not talking about bricks and mortar. We are talking about the workplace.'

According to Kane, the integrated approach tends to be seen among new generation IT companies or giants like Mobil facing rapid expansion. 'To expand you have to get the job done,' said Kane. Such companies, he added, also don't have the same history of divisions.

Kane was speaking alongside John Suyker, senior vice-president of corporate real estate at ABN Amro and Robert Bonwell, director of global client services at Jones Lang LaSalle, during a workshop on operating corporate real estate across Europe.

The workshop identified integration of facilities management and real estate operations as one of the biggest challenges at an organisational level for corporates working across Europe.

'In practice it is difficult to get integration supported,' commented Suyker, although new approaches such as corporate infrastructure resource management had begun to integrate IT 'around the workplace'.