As reported on i-FM last month Healey & Baker is set for a major initiative in facilities management across Europe. The push will call upon the skills, services and client contacts of its New York-based international partner Cushman & Wakefield - the two firms merged in 1998 following an eight year strategic alliance.

Cushman & Wakefield brings a number of services together under an Asset Services heading, including property management, facilities management, project management and agency leasing.

Speaking to i-FM, John Santora, Executive Managing Director of C&W's Asset Services operation, said that US corporations had embraced outsourcing: "Real estate executives, who have by and large led moves to outsource, have generally been pleased with the results, both in terms of cost saving and service delivery.

We are running mission critical facilities for major corporates, including several of the larger banks. In most cases engineering is on our payroll. We bring all our people together at a host site twice a year to share best practice."

He acknowledged that some facility managers within larger corporates might feel threatened but those who had moved across to the third party side had generally had a positive experience.

Commenting on the US and UK views of property, Santora said that capital could generally be used better elsewhere in the business and corporates should not be in the property business. He could foresee the 'corporate PFI' approach working in the US but it would take some time for it to gain acceptance.

Santora looked forward to substantial growth in Europe, driven by project and facilities management for US based multi-nationals, not all in the new economy sector. Clients include GE, Hewlett Packard and Lucent. Michael Swanstrom, who has 20 years' experience with C&W in the US and was recently managing 12m sq ft (1.1m sq m) for Citibank, is in the UK working on the Lucent Technologies account.

Cushman & Wakefield has developed an e-commerce real estate package to integrate previously disparate functions such as help desk, space management, lease administration, preventative maintenance and project management. The solution, called big-e-realestate.com, has been developed with Business Integration Group and allows dynamic updating of information. For example, changes in lease details update the space plan; changes to equipment revise the safety information.

"We believe it's a leader and everybody else is chasing," said Santora, "We have 50m sq ft (4.6m sq m) on that platform and are using some of the services with Lucent in the UK. We'll be rolling it out in Europe."

Richard Byatt

www.cushwake.com
www.big-e-realestate.com
www.bigcenter.com