The future of the office; the future of the civil service. For Mark Bourgeois, it’s difficult to think of one without thinking of the other.
As chief executive of the Government Property Agency, Bourgeois heads up a 400-strong team that aims to transform how the civil service works and what its real estate portfolio looks like. Among the end goals is targeting a “smaller, greener, better” office estate; one that in turn allows for a rethink of where roles are based and who is attracted to them.
The agency oversees 53% of the government’s office estate. Much of the focus is on slimming the London portfolio, shuttering buildings and moving civil servants to other sites in the capital – and to new developments in other cities around the country.
Recent moves include the closures of Windsor House and Albany House, both SW1, with 1,700 civil servants – including from Homes England – moved to other offices. Those followed what the agency called a “landmark” closure of the 323,000 sq ft 1 Victoria Street, SW1. Civil servants from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Department for Business and Trade moved to new offices including 3-8 Whitehall Place, 55 Whitehall and 22-26 Whitehall, all SW1 – the latter where Bourgeois meets Estates Gazette.
“I’m really passionate about us being seen as a collaborative enabler of civil service reform,” he said. “We’re here to serve the government and if we can do our job, we can support civil service reform in all of its forms. The country needs an agile, smart, bright, versatile civil service, no doubt about that. I do feel we can be part of enabling that change.”
Hubs and humility
Bourgeois, a former retail real estate specialist who was UK managing director for Hammerson, became interim chief executive of the GPA in November 2023, taking the role permanently last September.
“It’s one of the toughest leadership organisational challenges I’ve ever faced,” he said. “The complexities of organising what is essentially a hybrid property services company in a civil services wrapper – that in itself is quite challenging – then the political overlay and the complexities across government make it a real challenge.
“This was never a role for [me to say] ‘Trust me, I’m from real estate’. I’ve had to come into this with a lot of humility, and just massive respect and admiration for what people are trying to do in these incredibly complex roles.”
The agency has four overarching objectives. “First and foremost, we are here to create brilliant workplaces for civil servants to be productive, to want to come into the office,” Bourgeois said. “That’s the thing that gets me and many of my colleagues out of bed with a spring in our step each morning.”
Next is the role that the agency and its work can play in regeneration. Bourgeois pointed to projects such as York Central, being brought forward by Homes England, Network Rail and McLaren, where the GPA is working up plans to anchor the commercial office hub.
“That’s a great opportunity to close some of the older offices we have in and around York and consolidate departments, principally the Cabinet Office and Department for Education,” he said.
With work under way on a digital campus in Manchester, ongoing development of the Darlington hub, and other schemes in cities as varied as Newcastle, Glasgow and Cardiff, Bourgeois said the agency has a “powerful” opportunity to drive regional development.
“In a location where departments previously might have all been in individual offices scattered around a region, that consolidation, collaboration and building of a skills focus and a campus format is something that the new government is keen to drive, particularly out of London,” said Bourgeois, who tends to split the majority of his week between London and Birmingham, where the GPA has its headquarters.
The third priority is for the agency to lead on the green agenda. Last year, the agency spent £20m on existing buildings, Bourgeois said, and “every building we refit and how we shape the portfolio should be more carbon efficient”.
“Typically, we’re closing one that was inefficient,” he added, highlighting 1 Victoria Street.
Finally comes the opportunity to save the government money. Since the GPA formed in 2018, there have been close to 50 buildings closed in London alone, with savings of more than £200m.
“With a central team co-ordinating across departments and enabling offices to shut and consolidate, there are huge efficiencies,” Bourgeois said.
“In every city we have a portfolio plan. We map out where the public estate is and then part of that estates planning piece is to understand how we can consolidate.”
Principle and purpose
Moving into the public sector has been “a huge privilege” for Bourgeois. “The whole public service piece absolutely resonated – the purpose-led nature of it,” he said.
There are aspects of the role now in which he calls on his retail mindset honed at Hammerson and earlier at Capital & Regional.
“Having come from a retail shopping centre background, where my mission’s always been to create great places for people to be and organisations to thrive, the same kind of principles apply here,” he said.
But there are also things he knows now that he would liked to have known at a company such as Hammerson.
“I think I’ve developed as a leader,” he said. “In your traditional commercial environment you’ve got some nice carrots in the form of bonuses and salaries. And, of course, you have the sticks. It’s not quite so straightforward in the civil service. The range and depth that’s required as a leader to bring together the very best in the teams around you is a challenge I’ve really enjoyed.”
“Just how I show up as a leader, those different levers you pull, that’s something that fascinates me,” added Bourgeois, who is also a qualified executive coach. “With those skills, I might have been a better leader [earlier on].”
Bourgeois and the team have plenty of work ahead. The agency has grown quickly, the chief executive said, and ensuring 400 people are working together efficiently at the same time as overseeing strategic partnerships with the likes of JLL, BNP Paribas, WSP, Gleeds, Tetra Tech and AtkinsRéalis “is not easy”. He gives “massive respect” to past colleagues as well as his predecessor, Steven Boyd. “We’re now in a period of stabilisation,” he added.
The impact of the hard work will be clear, he hopes – even as the office portfolio shrinks, the remaining footprint will still be vast.
“The scale is enormous,” Bourgeois said. “The opportunity to quite assertively close older buildings when they expire, hand them back to the landlords for arguably better alternative uses, and focus on newer, bigger hubs, more centrally located, is a compelling programme.”
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