Woods Bagot’s Stephen Jones about work-in-progress during COVID

1. Under current market conditions, do you have to change or reassess key objectives?

Reply by Stephen Jones, Woods Bagot
Our business has moved from a focus on modest growth and consolidation to that of a transitionary strategy. Rather than building on what we know and saw ahead, we look towards a changed environment in sectors, markets and society.

Woods Bagot is a global firm with 16 studios in 6 Regions, inter-studio collaboration design and delivering of our major projects has developed as usual practice for us over the last 10 years.  Our diverse and connected structure supports us well for working collaboratively, virtually and remotely.  

Many of our projects are designed and delivered by teams physically remote from each other, for example, we recently completed Google Tokyo project, which has involved team members from Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney and New York.  Commercial Bay in Auckland, the tallest commercial tower was completed just as the country went into COVID lockdown – this was an example of collaboration by our North America, Australia and Hong Kong and studios. 

There are parts of our work are easier to do remotely and some part that are more challenging. Specialist knowledge form international studios offers local and regional clients access to a world of ideas and design experience. Projects are continuing, the issues include matters such as having effective skills available, often supporting home/ remote working in so that our teams can continue to deliver high quality services. At the same time, COVID-19 challenges us socially and psychologically. We continue to monitor people’s well-being – physical, mental and social and maintain social distancing at workplace and daily life through regular surveys.

Woods Bagot has set clear guideline allowing only essential travel. Although we have postponed business trips, conferences and events in coming months, we’ve focused on minimising negative service impacts of on our business and ensure our clients ongoing service.

2. How do you think the Covid-19 epidemic has affected your business in the past few months?

It’s a challenging time for everyone. 

It hasn’t been without problems social stress has been heightened challenges, particularly people with children affected by school and university closures. Above all, it’s been a time to increase engagement with our people. Well-prepared weekly studio briefings by VC and face to face have inspire confidence in management.

With our global studio model, we actively promoted ourselves as ‘open for business’. Fortunately, the majority of our projects are continuing and in some cases, we are seeing projects accelerating. 

3. How did you manage your business run smoothly?

Woods Bagot is taking a calm, considered approach to COVID-19 in order to maximize the safety of our people and minimize disruption to our clients. We have a global and regional crisis plans in place with cascading actions and staged approach to rehearing our firm for the future. We invested a lot on time to communicate this at all levels of the firm and with our clients.

As always, the health and wellbeing of our people and our communities are at the center of our response to the pandemic. We are taking precautions in each of our 16 studios to maintain health and hygiene, and in turn, continuing to provide quality professional services. We are monitoring the guidelines set by governments and health authorities and adapting to the ever-changing circumstances.

Woods Bagot has a Global incident response team that meets daily and guides the company’s coordination and decisions in what is a constantly changing environment. Woods Bagot Information Technology and Design Technology streams have implemented and, in some cases, further enhanced our existing global platforms, to ensure we continue to deliver to our clients and our partners. Some examples of this are:
– Secure remote access environment to enable optimal access to data networks and Woods Bagot applications and data, combined with
– Secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) for secure and real time access to Woods Bagot data and networks
– Multi Factor Authentication to ensure security of our systems and data
– Autodesk BIM 360 for project collaboration
– Microsoft Teams and other collaboration tools for collaboration and virtual team communication
– Video Conferencing for internal and external engagement with our stakeholders and project teams
– Networks and VPN firewalls were recently upgraded and are successfully scaling with the demand Woods Bagot has also rolled out training for all staff on project delivery in a remote working environment, tested each and every studio to ensure we continue to deliver an uninterrupted service, and in the vast majority of cases all studios are now working remotely Woods Bagot is already adept at using technology to communicate. We work collaboratively, remotely, and virtually, all day every day, between our studios. Working remotely is second nature to us thanks to our Design Intelligence (DI) Portal powered by a scalable and secure digital platform. This online gateway allows us to share ideas, achievements, and intelligence across our global studio.

4. What is the overall impact of the Covid-19 on your company operations? How do you view its impact on business development?

As this situation unfolds around us we are all working through a range of challenging issues to maintain strength of the business and care for our people and their families.

The need is to maintain project deliverables across effected regions has led to higher levels of collaboration, VC communication and group discussion about strategy at project and company level.  We established a formal weekly regional COVID-19 VC committee meeting to oversee the regional response and studio management procedures in all China studios.
For the management teams, there are hourly issues to deal with including complex discussion with clients about how to service them, contract deliverables, individual staff issues and their safety plus personal issues with their kids, parents and love ones. This unplanned activity and effort all take an enormous amount of time, time that crosses over the ‘business as normal’ trying to hit the targets of the month, new initiatives and long-term planning.

The work form home program has had profound impacts on the firm. We managed to move 750 people to work form home over 3 weeks without major disruption to services, an incredible feat by our operations and management teams.

Interestingly, the move back form home to office environment, such as we have experienced in china, has been without much challenges and we found that our staff generally want to be in an office environment where possible.

Going forward the forced move to flexible/working form home programs will become more engrained in the work life of the industry. This will affect operations, IT and real estate investments.

5. Coronaviruses bring unprecedented challenges to the global environment. What do you think are the most important management actions to overcome this current status?

Stay calm, communicate and be positive about the future.

Stay informed, communications and consistency are the keys for leadership in this emergency. We constantly updated clients on website, through letters and emails along with weekly update through social media that we are safe, active and ‘open for business’. Weekly, we’ve held all staff studio briefings by skype/Teams provided a valuable link and check in with leadership.

Once the first month passes there seems to be a normalizing of the situation on most people’s minds but it’s time that communication needs to continue to carry through as part of the stabilizing context of the studio.

It’s been a time to increase staff engagement. At the difficult time like this, we can show extra care for the staff such as checking where they are and asking if they have any difficulties? We can bring the team closer and the engagement and motivation can be elevated.

6. As a leader of the industry, when making critical strategic decisions at this unusual moment.  What is your recommendation of dealing with crisis in business environment

Experience underpins instinct and preparations and planning are key to a sense of control and navigating forced change like this. As one of the few business leaders who managed through the GFC in 2008/9 I learned about dealing with crisis in business environment and the light at the end of the tunnel.

Getting facts has been hard at times and I’ve sought to encourage reference to reliable and authoritative sources of ‘official’ information to ground decision making. A healthy avoidance of live stream social media also provides distancing form ‘noise’ and allows time to think before reacting.

Facts and information are only one dimension of managing in the crisis.  Human experience of this is so strong and the data needs to be balanced by empathy. Listening to concern and perceptions along with others experience and good ideas is essential.

Nothing better than battling hardship to bring out the best in great people and this period has built good relations among many colleagues. Clients equally have been grounded and, in many cases, have time to meet by VC, phone call or rarely face-to-face.

This has also been a good time to reconnect with clients who share the moment and have time to discuss their challenges and plans for after the pandemic.

7. How important do you think e-commerce and online activities will continue to play?

With temporary store closures and social distancing measures, e-commerce has exploded as recent figures in Asia, North America and Australia show. For example  online grocery shopping has gone up exponentially. Retailers are also looking into technology and solution to automate their stores. E-commerce has evolved into and experience-driven engagement like livestream shopping and virtual stores. 

This massive move to online for commodity shopping will continue after the crisis fades. However, during urban lockdowns we all immediately feel the loss of connection to others. Through this loss of mobility, the of social connection is valued now more than ever, and I see the social experience of shopping will still be a large part of the life in our cities- as it always has been.

In addition immersive social media, user experience, cashless transactions, movement monitoring and biometric data will merge to the digital experience of life in our  cities.

8. What do you think of the next trends / market lead?

In Asia we may be best placed to recover sooner than other regions.  Most clients seem to want to push their existing projects ahead. Many projects continue and where they’d stalled  in February, many clients are restarting projects, and some with elevated urgency.  Tech and Wellbeing will grow in impact.

Globally it will be a very challenging period. Stimulus packages continue to unfold and governments and industry are keen to see a return to economic growth.

We are developing 3 month and 2 yeas plans across all our sectors to look for silver linings and work with our key clients to partner with them to unlock emerging opportunities. As with all shifts socially, markets will close, and others unfold. Health and tech will be winners, Aviation, travel and hospitality not so much. Urbanism will continue, infrastructure and digital commerce will morph rapidly to a new normal.

The ongoing development of Asia has opened many opportunities to Woods Bagot’s practices over the years, our long-term relationship with our partners and clients in the region will continue grow to meet these challenges.

9. What is your recommendation of entering into new section?

This crisis context offers unknown risk and opportunities, where propositions are formulated, can be tested and refined leading to unique solutions. This is a familiar process to an architect- it’s called design.

Getting quality information, risk, people, stress, projects and forecasts take lots of time and quickly the business of projects trying to maintain some stability on projects becomes challenged. At this time, it is important not to panic. The GFC taught us that it takes time to work through crisis and change but we will move to a new normal.

As we move through this the role of design in problem solving can be leveraged to unlock hidden potential in property, urban placemaking and commercial development. The future can be better than the past. We just need to design it that way!

10.  Any other thoughts you would like to share with audience?

A period of great challenge can bring some unexpected positive impacts.  Social distancing brings with it unexpected emotions and time to reflect ton the values of sharing, connection and support for each other.  Although politicians don’t always provide the right guidance, we all innately recognize that there are opportunities for us to reconnect with family and colleagues is in some senses an opportunity to open a higher level of connection and shared understanding in the value of community. 

I imagine that this will profoundly change human relations between family members, neighbors in communities and customers and brands.