Opinion: Is anyone listening?

It was apt that the main talking point at this year's British Council for Offices conference was how the UK property industry should do deals abroad. After all, the venue was in Berlin, illustrating the importance of international business nowadays. They don't think like us, warned one of the lead speakers. Europeans don't get our jokes or appreciate our famous diplomacy. So watch out property players, or you will not make the deals.

But you don't have to go abroad to find a chronic breakdown of communications. Two of the world's biggest occupiers also pontificated from the rostrum that tenants and landlords were still talking entirely different languages. We don't need to do facilities management, cried tenants. Why can't you do it? No one on the development side seemed ready with an answer.

Simon Ward of Cisco called for a one-stop property shop offering everything from bricks and mortar to management services. Nigel Waring of HSBC was just as adamant, complaining at delays between taking space and moving in after fit-out. Why can't buildings be designed from the inside out rather than the other way around, he pleaded.

All very logical, and no doubt big names like Trillium will say this is just what they target. But most of the property industry remains locked in a rigid pattern where builders build, funders fund and occupiers are left to make the best of the rest. The problem with the property sector is that occupiers are not seen as customers. Landlords look instead to shareholders, who delight in the idea of rent flows undiluted by irritating and costly problems like building services.

Waring warned that occupiers would go abroad if they could not find the building specifications, flexible leases and services they need in the UK. But that might not solve the problems. Ward was so disgusted with the inability of finding anyone to take a long-term partnering role that it self-built three giant campus schemes in Munich, Amsterdam and Paris. Builders may not care, as they still get the work: but he pointed out that this denied the industry development profits on a cool 2.5 million sq ft of space.

Cisco might be trimming space now, but will return to lead the race for expansion before long. And its insistence on flexible 'green' buildings, its cry for all-in packages including facilities management and a closer partnership with landlords will be taken up by other occupiers.

Some are already voting with their feet. Chris Davies, property head at Barclays, said outsourcing property and facilities management has already paid for itself. Some 700 Woolwich properties were absorbed in three months during the two banks' merger — an impossible target if they had to combine two corporate teams. With lessons such as this, the day of the large in house property team is dead, conference heard.

But, what about the next time Barclays wants a new building? In central London it will probably succumb to deadening convention. But elsewhere, like Cisco, it will be driven by staff demands to find greener, more efficiently-managed buildings. Who will come up with the goods?

Is any other sector so out of touch with its customers? Perhaps the rail carriers, worshipping investors rather than travellers. Perhaps the retailers who lost touch with reality. The speed with which Railtrack and Marks & Spencer fell from grace may hold a message for the property industry.