The Occupiers Perspective: Why Workplaces are More Important than Ever

Alan Bainbridge MRICS, Director for BBC Property, which has over 150 locations across the UK, Alan has over 30 years experience in construction, property and facilities management. His involvement in flagship schemes from PFI, retail, commercial and media has given him a breadth of understanding across the market from owner to occupier and across the supply chain. He directs an in-house team of 30 professionals who manage an outsourced team of over 800 across the UK. Alan led the delivery of the award winning transformational MediaCityUK in Salford for the BBC and the new headquarters for BBC Wales in Central Square, Cardiff. These were both major programmes of change, with property, people and facilities at the forefront. He is a passionate advocate of the role that property can play in business when done properly. He uses the expertise of construction professionals over product sales and is committed to using the best in British manufacturing and fabrication to support this. The delivery of Central Square Cardiff for Wales’ new national headquarters has set a new world class standard, especially for accessibility in Workplace and FM design.

Kathryn Harrison-Thomas is the Global Business Partner to the Investment Banking and Asset Management divisions within Deutsche Bank, with regional accountability for all country portfolios except Germany, Spain, Belgium and Italy for Corporate Services. Since joining Deutsche Bank in 2005, Kathryn has held a variety of roles spanning real estate and operations management, change management and strategy across Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and the Rest of Europe before relocating back to the UK. Currently responsible for driving the London, New York, Hong Kong and Pan India Accommodation Strategies, which are challenging workplace convention and building for a rapidly changing IT landscape and workforce both in terms of gender and age diversity. Kathryn holds a degree in Geography from Royal Holloway & Bedford New College, University of London as well as various engineering and facilities management industry qualifications. Kathryn is married with two children and is an active champion of diversity and part of the leadership committee for Crew UK and a member of Council at Essex University.

As chief executive of ULI Europe, Lisette van Doorn is responsible for the development of the Institute’s activities across the region, including its renowned pan-European conferences and over 250 local meetings and events across 14 countries. She is also responsible for the ULI Charitable Trust, which raises money to advance ULI’s mission and philanthropic activities across Europe. Van Doorn joined ULI from LIRE, her own consultancy business, which advises international institutional real estate investors and fund managers on strategy, organisational optimisation and portfolio structuring.Prior to this, van Doorn was country manager for CBRE Global Investors where she managed a €1.6bn portfolio of assets in Italy and fund manager of two shopping centre funds (€ 1.3 billion) with assets in Spain, Portugal and Italy. Before joining CBRE Global Investors, van Doorn was founding chief executive for INREV, the European association for Investors in Non-Listed Real Estate Vehicles for four and a half years. She started her career at ING Investment Management, where she held account manager and assistant controller positions before being made managing director of research & strategy for ING Real Estate Investment Management Europe.