It’s a grey February morning at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors headquarters in Westminster’s George Street, where Nick Maclean and Justin Young have arranged to be interviewed. Young, the CEO since 2023, is caught up in a meeting and running five minutes late so Maclean, the new and at the same time not so new president, exchanges small talk while we wait.

He chats easily about the Middle East – referring to the 21 years he worked in, and then ran, CBRE’s business there. He talks about population split in the UAE, where about 88% of the population are foreigners, describing it as a ”fascinating social experiment” from which the West might learn. 

He was speaking before the world knew that the US and Israel were about to launch a military campaign against Iran, leading to retaliatory strikes, airspace closures and renewed geopolitical instability. Last week, on a follow-up call, he was able to go into some depth about the impact on friends and former colleagues as well as his views on the longer-term implications for the region (see Middle East market and the Iran conflict panel below).

Maclean, 62, left CBRE at the end of 2024 and returned to the UK last year. He didn’t know it at the time, but this meant he could be parachuted in as acting RICS president in March 2025. His predecessor, Justin Sullivan, had stepped aside just two months into his presidency to allow an investigation into his role as an expert witness in a court battle over a moth-infested mansion.

The Sullivan episode, while awkward for the institution, was far less serious than the governance crisis that hit the headlines in 2021 after a RICS leadership row. A damning report into the affair by Alison Levitt found that four non-executive directors had been unfairly dismissed after they raised concerns over why a critical financial report into the RICS’ treasury management function had been suppressed. The findings led to a full review by Michael Bichard into the institution’s purpose, governance and strategy in 2022.