Property Strategy Business Case

Case Study

Essex County Council, in common with the rest of the sector at the time, needed to remove unnecessary cost from their operational and office property. In 2011, we supported Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH) (their appointed property advisors) and were included as part of the Essex County Council Team to develop a Property Transformation Business Case.

Landmark’s main role was to work with the Principal Asset Strategy Manager to:

Develop the financial model,
Ensure information from departments and finance was consistent and tested,
Benchmark FM and other property costs to test validity of the model
Work with the team to develop various option appraisals taking into account variables such as office workstyles, varying levels of IT investment, different client interface strategies, centralised or decentralised administration, different disposal strategies etc
Develop the Property Transformation Business Case based on “The Green Book: Appraisal and Evaluation in Central Government” methodology

The outcome was a property rationalisation programme that was implemented by Essex County Council, supported as required by LSH with disposals and other support activities. In 2013 we were asked to update the Property Transformation Business Case to both validate that the change programme had yielded expected outcomes and also to test new scenarios in light of updated business objectives.

The benefits of our involvement in the project were:

The successful approval of the “biggest project of its type which (Essex County Council) has put through this (approval) process and certainly the biggest to have been approved”
The change programme was established and implemented successfully due to the clear strategy identified at all levels within the Council and the robust communication process with stakeholders during the option development and appraisal stage.

Essex County Council Project Feedback

“After the bruising of the process, we have received many very positive comments: finance have been satisfied with the robustness of your financial model - which has been key – and elsewhere the substantial stakeholder engagement process and the "integrity" of our proposals (visibly taking-on and supporting service requirements) has been praised highly. (Principal Asset Strategy Manager - Essex County Council)