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Watling Consulting

Unlocking property value through strategy, transformation and delivery

Watling Consulting is the specialist division of Watling, providing trusted strategic advice and decision support to government, mission-led and corporate clients navigating complex property challenges.

Our experts bring clarity, confidence and commercial realism to estate decisions, helping you unlock value through strategy, transformation and delivery.

We combine Big Four pedigree with a boutique ethos: focused, expert and hands-on. Whether reshaping portfolios, enabling net zero, delivering estate change, or developing robust business cases, we support our clients every step of the way.

Office-Environment1
Construction-Company
Global-Network
Public-Sector
Office-Environment
Law-Enforcement

Our methodology

A Structured Approach to Unlocking Property Value

At the heart of Watling Consulting is our structured methodology — Diagnose, Develop, Implement (DDI) — ensuring strategic rigour, co-created solutions and delivery that sticks.

Our approach helps clients unlock the full potential of their property portfolios by combining insight, alignment and practical implementation. 

Diagnose

We begin by deeply understanding your context, challenges and data. Through rigorous analysis, we surface both risks and opportunities that shape the case for change.

Develop

Together with stakeholders, we design and develop future-ready solutions. Our approach is strategic and co-creative, tailored to your business, ambition and delivery reality.

Implement

We provide hands-on support to bring strategies to life. From detailed plans to change and systems, we ensure impact is delivered, embedded and sustained.

Our structured approach brings clarity, confidence and delivery assurance to your property decisions, ensuring your property portfolio delivers greater value for your business, your people, and your communities.

Refined Service Areas Overview

We offer four integrated service areas to help clients manage and transform their property portfolios — from strategy to delivery.

Portfolio & Location Strategy

Strategic direction for complex estates
  • Estate strategy
  • Location strategy
  • Net zero carbon
  • Workspace strategy
  • Portfolio optimisation
  • Post-merger integration

Efficiency & Effectiveness

Improving performance, reducing cost, and enabling smarter delivery
  • Performance improvement
  • Cost reduction
  • Organisation design
  • Digital strategy and data systems
  • Diagnostics
  • Should cost modelling

Business Cases & Commercial Models

Building the case for investment and structuring delivery
  • Business and financial cases
  • Feasibility studies
  • Delivery strategy
  • Alternative delivery vehicles
  • Contract reviews
  • Due diligence M&A

Transformation & Programme Delivery

Turning strategy into results
  • Programme design and delivery
  • PMO & Project Management
  • Risk & viability checks
  • Business readiness

Our services - Unlocking portfolio value

Why Watling Consulting

Specialist & Focused: We focus solely on strategic real estate advisory; no distractions, no bolt-ons.

Experienced & Pragmatic: Our team blends strategic consultants, financial analysts, sector specialists and property professionals – combining insight with hands-on delivery experience across government and commercial sectors.

Data-led & Outcome-oriented: We’re rigorous in analysis and grounded in reality. Data gaps don’t slow us down; they sharpen our focus. Our advice is evidence-based and built for implementation.

Trusted & Embedded: We work shoulder-to-shoulder with our clients, unlocking decisions and building internal capability.  We treat strategy and business cases as the start of a change programme.

At Watling Consulting, we combine public sector insight with a commercial mindset shaped by decades of experience advising lenders and recovering value from distressed real estate portfolios.

That DNA – forged in pressure, sharpened by delivery – informs everything we do: from designing estate strategies and business cases that withstand scrutiny, to releasing cash and community benefits through hands-on delivery.

Sectors We Serve

We work across the private and public sector supporting organisations with complex property challenges.  In government and the public sector we have deep experience and services tailored to:

  • Local authorities
  • Combined authorities & mayoral offices
  • Police, fire & rescue
  • Transport and infrastructure bodies
  • Justice and courts
  • Central government departments
  • Regional and devolved government
  • Higher education & life sciences
  • NHS and health organisations

“Strategic property decisions aren’t standalone, they’re the beginning of complex change.
We bring clarity, commercial edge and delivery focus to help leaders deliver lasting benefit.”

Case Studies

Place Property Vehicle
Business Case - Civic Centre Redevelopment & Place Regeneration
Blue Light Estate Strategy
Global Agency - Organisation Redesign
Collaborative efficiency savings programme
Strategic Property Review – construction company
Student Accommodation Strategy – UK university

Our Team

Watling’s team includes a blend of in-house and long-standing consulting professionals who work closely under a unified methodology and leadership. Our team members combine deep expertise in property, transformation, finance and delivery, aligned through shared tools, values and strategic direction.

Guy Brett

Director and Head of Watling Consulting
Guy has over 30 years’ experience advising corporate, public and mission-led organisations on strategic real estate, estates transformation and business case development. He specialises in unlocking value and performance through practical, insight-led change across property, procurement and operating models. Guy leads Watling Consulting’s multi-disciplinary team.

Kate Mullins

Principal consultant – Strategy and Workplace

Kate is a real estate and project management professional with expertise in workplace, regeneration, portfolio strategy and location planning. She has worked across office, retail and industrial sectors for occupiers and investors, supporting strategic decision-making and implementation.

Dr Connel Bottom

Practice Specialist – Property and FM

Connel is a strategic property and facilities management specialist with a background in Big 4 consulting and research. His expertise includes lifecycle modelling, benchmarking and performance optimisation across complex estates and infrastructure portfolios.

Dr Chris Emin

Principal Consultant –
Real Estate Strategy and Information Systems
Chris brings over 30 years’ experience working on real estate challenges including procurement, information systems, business modelling and portfolio strategy. He combines strategic insight with technical depth across asset-heavy environments.

Richard Grass

Principal Consultant – Estate Transformation
Richard is a chartered surveyor and experienced interim manager. He leads estate and workplace programmes that deliver tangible financial and organisational value. His work spans corporate real estate, transformation programmes and service performance improvement.

Agnes Jones

Graduate Surveyor

Agnes brings project and analytical support to the team. She has a real estate degree and interests in consultation, financial modelling, ESG and client management.

Mike Lane

Practice Specialist – Business Cases and Impact
25-years management consultancy experience for wide-ranging and high profile clients across the public, private and voluntary sectors. Specific expertise relating to evaluation and research, socio-economic impact assessment, Green Book business cases and appraisals, project/ programme management, strategy development and programme design/implementation. PRINCE2 accredited.

John Tauware

Practice Specialist – Financial Modelling
John is a senior qualified accountant with expertise in financial modelling and business case development. He supports real estate occupiers and developers with commercial analysis, option appraisal and investment planning.

Brian Thompson

Principal Consultant – Strategy and Portfolio Planning
A surveyor and management consultant with 30 years’ + experience of providing strategic support to public and private sector organisations, including real estate strategy, asset management planning, workplace consulting and procurement.

Get in Touch

Let’s talk about how we can help unlock value from your estate and support your strategic priorities.

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Place Property Vehicle

Client: Public sector consortium (County Council, Fire, Police, Health Board)
Challenge:
  • Fragmented governance and duplicated estate
  • No shared delivery model
What our team did
  • Developed the Estates Place Partnership
  • Co-designed operating model and business case
  • Created joint governance frameworks
Benefits:
  • Enabled integrated service delivery
  • Scalable vehicle for collaboration
  • Capital savings, efficiency, pooled resources

Business Case - Civic Centre Redevelopment & Place Regeneration

Client: London Borough Council with 20 ageing buildings
Challenge:
  • Underused, cellular offices
  • Political and union resistance to closures
  • Sites with high regeneration potential
What our team did:
  • Developed strategy and business case
  • Rationalised from 19 to 3 sites
  • Planned modern civic centre and service hubs
Benefits:
  • 30% floor reduction
  • £1bn+ regeneration value
  • Improved customer access and service hubs

Blue Light Estate Strategy

Client: Law Enforcement Agency (20,000+ staff)
Challenge:
  • Poor data quality
  • Unionised workforce
  • Internal complexity
What our team did:
  • Delivered an estates strategy
  • Created costed business case
  • Supported internal governance and capability
Benefits:
  • £500m OPEX savings, £200m CAPEX from assets
  • 30% estate reduction
  • Strong executive endorsement

Global Agency - Organisation Redesign

Challenge:
  • Operations in over 100 countries
  • Lack of structured governance and delayed decision-making
  • Teams were dispersed and siloed, with inconsistent processes and duplicated skillsets.
  • Declining stakeholder confidence and poor internal engagement
  • Fragmented delivery across a global network
What our team did: Our team undertook a comprehensive diagnostic across governance, people, and processes. Working with senior leaders, we:
  • Defined pain points and organisational barriers
  • Designed a Target Operating Model (TOM) to enable cross-border integration
  • Led the co-design of a change programme focused on performance, engagement, and delivery
Benefits Delivered:
  • A new global partnership and sourcing model with clearer roles and accountability
  • Creation of regional centres of excellence, improving coordination and capability
  • Substantial uplift in stakeholder feedback and employee engagement, reinforcing trust and confidence in the agency’s transformation

Collaborative efficiency savings programme - cross public agency

Designed and delivered a programme with 15 local public bodies in a geography  including the blue light services, health and councils to stimulate joint working initiatives and accelerate the release of savings from the estate. Designed a diagnostic approach that rapidly quantified the size of the opportunity and generated priority collaborative projects
Challenge:
  • 15+ organisations
  • Low hanging fruit picked and cost efficiency opportunities required
  • Lack of data
  • Cultural differences and varying degrees of buy-in across participants
What our team did:
  • Designed a diagnostic tool to standardise and accelerate data capture and analysis
  • Identified over 30 improvement and cost reduction opportunities
  • Quantified the size of the opportunity
  • Converted opportunities into prioritised bite sized projects
Benefits Delivered:
  • 100 local improvement opportunities identified
  • Programme for accelerated release of tens of million of pounds savings from 8 priority projects through joint working initiatives, including town centre redevelopment
  • Increased interaction between local partners

Strategic Property Review – Construction Company

Challenge:
  • Fast growing company with £1bn + turnover driven by M&A
  • Federated structure
  • No property strategy and limited controls
  • Requirement for capital investment
  • Led a strategic portfolio review to identify opportunities for generating value
What our team did:
  • Portfolio review
  • Estates function review
  • Identified and evaluated opportunities for releasing capital through through change of use, sale and leaseback, redevelopment & acquisition
  • Redesign of property services
Benefits Delivered:
  • Implementation of new target operating model leading to 10-15% revenue savings
  • Centralisation of property decision-making and services
  • Prioritised and costed programme to release capital

Student Accommodation Strategy – UK university

Challenge:
  • Non-delivery of new beds by PBSA provider
  • Scarce multi-tenanted housing stock
  • Ageing university stock of residences
  • Growth in enrolments required to compensate for declining real terms revenue
  • Reputation risks of inadequate provision and quality
What our team did:
  • Analysis of projected demand versus supply
  • Financial modelling of options
  • A commercial procurement strategy
Benefits Delivered:
  • Identified sites and delivery routes for circa 2500 new beds
  • Funding strategy for £200M
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