Newsmaker

If Steve Mackintosh had a mission statement it would probably be this: to drag facilities management and corporate property strategy out of their respective 'silos' and throw them into the same corporate bed.

As director of corporate property services at global property agency Jones Lang LaSalle, he has spent most of the last year pulling together various disparate, but related, functions in the UK to create a new corporate property services team.

The parts that have gone into the new whole include the London-based procurement department, the technical services department, one corporate outsourcing account, work related to the purchase of US facilities company, Compass Leasing, and the investor facilities management group — a group focusing on management of investor's property portfolios.

Mackintosh's newly installed 40 strong head office group see facilities management as the integrator between corporate property and support services.

'Traditionally facilities management has been separate from strategy — we say you get better value by doing facilities management alongside strategy — hence we have strong links with our consulting groups for example and get involved in issues such as change management,' he says. 'We see more and more corporates wanting to see that gap between facilities and property closed.'

The new division takes on both consulting and outsourcing work. Currently the majority of contracts are on the consulting side, although by value the work is split 50:50.

Mackintosh expects to see the proportion of outsourcing work grow — particularly as the firm picks up outsourcing contracts via its consultancy business.

The investor side of the business employs some 900 staff, 50 per cent of whom are property managers.

'With a shared service platform the base skills are similar. But top end delivery isn't. Corporates want customer services and landlords want more out of their assets.'

Mackintosh, like many players in the sector, is eyeing European countries like Germany — where the market for facilities services is, 'like the UK five years ago'.

He should know. As the former Johnson Controls European facilities management director for the IBM account, he is one of the few to have run a truly cross-border outsourced facilities management deal.

With its newly integrated department, he believes JLL is now in a position to make the most of European opportunities: 'There was a gap in our product range that needed pulling together. The opportunities on the corporate side are now unlimited.'