Lockdown diaries: Avison Young’s Gerry Hughes

Gerry Hughes is European president of Avison Young. Here, he explains how his days have changed since lockdown began – and what he misses the most about life on the road. 6 am – it is another day, a Thursday, I think. I have always been an early riser, not least in the past year or so, when I have spent many early mornings en route to Heathrow. How life has changed, but I ensure that I stick to a routine. That routine starts with a very strong coffee as I contemplate the day, catch up on e-mails, social media and WhatsApp with my daughters. Since working to embed GVA into the Avison Young family I have got used to long days dictated by time zones, from continental Europe to North America. A pattern has emerged that continues through lockdown: mornings focused on our European business and afternoons and early evenings dedicated to North America. My day starts in earnest at 7am with a catch-up call with my European executive team. Today, the focus is on preparing for coming out of lockdown and evolving our growth strategy in a post Covid-19 world. The tone has changed noticeably. The first month of lockdown was heavily focused on staff wellbeing and morale while working remotely, and now it’s expanded into transitioning back to the office environment. It is followed by exercise time, with a short jog to the park and then my one-hour routine. This is sacrosanct these days and is followed by a “healthy” breakfast – a new thing for me in lockdown, but now very much built into my day. This morning, a Titanic Foundation Board meeting provides a departure from my normal day. I have been a non-executive board member for about nine months and enjoy the experience of going back to my roots in Belfast and, indeed, my first ever project as a planning consultant. In 1986-87, I worked on the masterplan for the Belfast Waterfront and setting up the Laganside Development Corporation. The foundation is responsible for Titanic Belfast and for promoting and delivering the Titanic Quarter as a maritime heritage destination. Today, however, proceedings are dominated by the impact of Covid-19. We are preparing for reopening at the end of lockdown, accommodating hygiene and social distancing requirement and dealing with concerns around foreign visitors from areas such as China and North America. Late morning/lunch time (minus the actual lunch) is spent scripting my text for one of a series of bite-size internal videos we are putting out to our staff which give market and sector updates. This one is on the subject of urban regeneration; sharing the UK experience with our continental European and North American teams. I take a moment to consider – facial hair or no facial hair? I opt to keep the goatee, it may become permanent. The afternoon kicks off with a global business continuity call. These calls have been critical in shaping our response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have offered a fascinating insight to the impacts in different jurisdictions. They are short, punchy and business-focused. Following a quick afternoon snack, I go back to more Zoom calls. The first is with Christian Schreiber and Martin Brümmer in Munich, who have just joined our European capital markets team, to see how they are settling in and to make formal introductions to Penny Hacking in London. We discuss the opportunities around our additional cross-border capability. Germany is coming out of lockdown and will be our first “back-to-office” country. The call is short as I need to switch to M&A discussions in Spain – again preparing for our post Covid-19 European growth plans. It is at this time I most miss the European travel, meeting new people in different cities and planning a new business together face-to-face. I cannot wait for that to return. I try to have a call each day with a client in order to understand their issues and how we can help them. Today it is with a developer in the UK who is focused on getting back on site, safely and as soon as possible – we discuss and debate the challenges in getting the supply-chain up and running again. As the afternoon closes out I have a break – tea and catch up with Twitter, LinkedIn and the news. This is all before my final Zoom call of the day, which is a global executive committee call. It has become a weekly event as we have so much to discuss – board nominations, finances, forward business strategy and back-to-office planning included. We are using our own experiences and solutions to help guide the advice to our clients on their own workplace strategy. Several things strike me from a day like this. Real estate and our built environment has such a significant impact on people’s wellbeing. Our industry has changed forever. But regardless of where we are in the world, we all have an important role to think beyond bricks and mortar – it is, and always has been, about people. 8pm is dinner – self-cooked – Netflix – The Last Dance is a must watch for sports fans – and a final family phone call.