Property Strategy – Commonwealth Entity

The team at ASPA worked with a large Commonwealth entity with a diverse national property portfolio between 2021-2023 to develop a Property Strategy. Through extensive consultation across the clients’ various capabilities, the following case for change was developed:

• Changes to the workplace were difficult to implement and take considerable timeframes.
• The environment within the clients’ offices had historically not supported the health and wellbeing and operational readiness of the workforce.
• The offices did not facilitate team-based work, nor cross entity collaboration and communication.
• The offices did not facilitate working with strategic partners, including other Commonwealth government entities, across jurisdictions and with the private sector.
• The design and fit-out of the national portfolio of tenancies was old and not based on contemporary workforce requirements.
• Leased space was generally inefficient, expensive, and costly to maintain (comparative to other entities and industry benchmarks).
• There was a perception of limited corporate understanding of the requirements of delivery areas.
• There were no consistent business planning processes across corporate areas or within operational areas.
• The clients different enabling services worked in siloes, with limited alignment across strategic and business planning activities.

The ASPA team developed the Property Strategy to respond to these challenges. The benefits from the implementation of the Strategy are:

• Enhanced operational delivery, by providing property that is flexible to respond to change in delivery requirements and consistent to facilitate cross organisational learning and capability uplift.
• Improved employee experience, with property that supports the clients’ diverse operations, is accessible to all, supports employee wellbeing and prioritises physical and psychological safety.
• Improvement in levels of collaboration, through the provision of spaces that support the development of teams (including the forming of multi-disciplinary, cross organisational/command/capability teams).
• Enhanced relationships with strategic partners, through facilitating interaction and providing infrastructure that supports collaborative work practices with other agencies, service providers, and partners.
• Improved efficiency achieved through enhanced productivity, through greater alignment across our enabling strategies, and improved understanding of our requirements, as well as through excellence in compliance.

“….for the first time in 10 years, I feel a genuine sense things are heading in the right direction, with long-term and sustainable consideration.”

“….the team has completely changed focus. They are more strategic, customer-service oriented and across their business.”

Senior Executive Service Officer, Commonwealth client