IAMC Member Spotlight

As an organization, IAMC fosters relationships that turn into both business partnerships and long-term friendships. The path to corporate real estate varies widely, and our members come from a variety of professional and personal backgrounds.

We thank Kevin Harrington, global category manager-real estate for Brambles, for sharing his!
 

1. Tell us a little bit about you:

   My name is Kevin Harrington and I’m the regional head of real estate for the Brambles Group in EMEA and APAC.
    
   I’m originally from Dublin, in Ireland, where I studied at University College Dublin (UCD), but I now live in the New Forest National Park, in the South of England; a beautiful and semi-wild part of the country and a great part of the world for us to raise our daughter.

2. Tell us about your path to corporate real estate. 

   I had been working as an industrial broker when I got recruited to join a large service provider’s corporate services team as a transaction manager. After about a year, I was recruited by a global corporate to manage the real estate function for their portfolio in the UK and Ireland.

3. What is the scope of your responsibilities at your organization?

   My geographic scope is EMEA and APAC, and my primary responsibilities are portfolio management, real estate strategy, workplace design, sustainability in real estate (I recently qualified with an advance qualification in Sustainability in Real Estate from the Cambridge Institute for Sustainable Leadership) and transaction management. 

4. What is your favorite part of your role, or the industry as a whole?

   I have two favorite things, if I may. First, I love being a trusted partner and advisor to so many of my colleagues; helping them to make the best decisions for the portfolio, to provide our colleagues with safe, well-located and right-sized properties for our people business to thrive. Secondly, I love how collegiate our industry is. Go to any conference or event and you’ll find peers from across CRE, openly sharing insights and best practice with each other, from the stage and over a drink, to make everyone better at their jobs.

5. What is one skill specific to your job could you share with the rest of the membership?

   Adaptability: We all work in disparate and varied geographies with different cultures and norms, and we need to flex to accommodate them. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be implementing CRE best practice globally – we should of course – but we also need to be aware that, for cultural or infrastructural reasons, the office layout or location strategy that applies in the USA or the UK, may not apply in other regions.

6. Tell us about a CRE or FM project in which you played a role of which you were particularly proud.

   We have recently embarked on a round of office downsizing across the world, and it has proven to be a huge success. Out of the Covid pandemic, we have moved to a hybrid working model, and our people have really embraced it. It has allowed us to reduce our office footprint, using lease events to take change opportunities and invest in more efficient and inclusive layouts. Brambles is a Top Employer, and enhancing our workplace is a key element of our talent acquisition and retention strategy.

7. What led you to join IAMC?

   I joined IAMC back in 2012, one of the founding members here in the UK, and I have enjoyed every minute of my involvement. I joined following an invitation from a service provider that I was doing some work with and haven’t looked back. IAMC delivers for me in three main ways: knowledge sharing, high quality forums and fun.

8. Fun Facts:

   1. Tell us about one thing you have on your bucket list.

      A month in a hillside villa in Tuscany with my family and without email.

   2. What was your first job?

      My first job was a paper round for the local paper “Southside,” for the princely sum of 3p per paper delivered; the 115 houses took me two hours to walk to, door-to-door – do the maths … My first post-university job was as a landscape design and project manager for a large landscaper in Co. Cork in Ireland.

   3. What would your superpower be?

        Understanding my young daughter.

Again, we thank Keving Harrington for letting us know more about his path to corporate real estate and IAMC.