Susan Freeman
Hi, I’m Susan Freeman. Welcome back to our PropertyShe podcast series brought to you by Mishcon de Reya in association with the London Real Estate Forum, where I get to interview some of the key influencers in the world of real estate and the built environment. Today, I am delighted to welcome Olaide Oboh. Olaide is the strategic thinker and problem-solver with a fifteen year record of successful delivery in public and private sector organisations. With a degree in Sociology, Olaide is fascinated by how people engage with one another, with the physical spaces and society in general, and this curiosity drives her. Olaide leads on external relationships establishing and nurturing partnerships with key local business, investor and stakeholder contacts as well as growing the Socius pipeline in new and existing locations across the country. An experienced public speaker, Olaide regularly speaks and participates in debates on a range of topics, including public-private partnership, social impact, arts and culture and future trends. In 2022, Olaide was recognised by Estates Gazette as one of the 50 most influential people in the industry. So now we are going to hear from Olaide Oboh on the challenges and ups and downs of a social impact developer.
Good afternoon, Olaide, it’s lovely to have you in the studio. I was thinking it was very fortunate we ran into each other at UKREiiF in Leeds, which I can’t believe was back in May. Was it a good event for you?
Olaide Oboh
I really enjoyed it. I thought there was a lot of people there, which was a huge boost from the year before but it was really a good opportunity to meet with lots of Local Authority partners, hear some of the ambitions and aspirations that they have and to have some frank and honest conversations about the challenges we have in our industry. I really enjoyed it and I really like Leeds, great city.
Susan Freeman
It is a great city, isn’t it. Unfortunately, I only discovered the canals and different ways of travelling round Leeds as I was leaving. So, according to the Socius website, you have over fifteen years of experience in real estate and it says, ‘She’s witnessed the wins, the losses and the near misses and she’s stuck at it.” I just read that and I thought there must have been times when you thought perhaps property development is a sort of difficult way to earn a living?
Olaide Oboh
Without a shadow of a doubt. And I’m a very accidental developer. It wasn’t ever a career path for me and I still sometimes reluctantly describe myself as a property developer because I didn’t set out on a path to be in this industry and I fell into it and I’ve fallen in love with it, if I’m honest but when I have those awkward moments at parties when someone says, “What do you do?”, I kind have to go “oh gosh, this is going to be an awkward conversation” because I sometimes I feel like I’m apologising for what I do and have to remind, you know because people do have a perception about our industry and it’s usually not the nicest perception and I have to remind them that there are some people who are in this industry to do lots of good and there are plenty of people in this industry who are doing good and I think that’s the reason why most of us get out of bed every day, it’s not because we want to count all the pounds and pence that we’ve made, it’s actually because we fundamentally believe that you know by providing good quality housing, delivering good places, we can genuinely make a difference and improve people’s life chances and that’s why I’ve stuck at it through the wins and the losses and the stresses, and the probably many grey hairs, I’ve definitely stuck at it because I do fundamentally believe that its, it does good and it’s a place for me, our industry should continue to champion those things that we do really well.
Susan Freeman
No, you are absolutely right and I’m intrigued as to how your path took you to property development because I think you started off with a sociology degree, didn’t you?
Olaide Oboh
Yes I did and I, at the time, I was reading lots of articles this week actually because sociology has now become one of the most popular subjects, the current cohort of A Level students have taken and it’s been described as the reason why is because lots of young people now are becoming a lot more socially aware, climate change is in our face so it’s part of our day to day lives and as a result lots of people now seeing sociology as a better way of understanding our society but when I studied sociology many years ago, it was because I balked at the thought of doing history, I didn’t enjoy history and I thought well, actually sociology sounds quite interesting because it’s much more current and I enjoyed you know the current state of the world, I was a big fan of politics, big fan of kind of social science and I wanted to kind of carry that on but I remember it wasn’t the most popular subject, there was a bit of eye roll and so I decided to do English Literature because I thought well that sounded quite serious but sociology was the bit that I could really get my teeth into and when I finished my course, I kind of thought oh well that’s a great course, learn all about Marxism and you know current state of the world and thought well look, that sounds interesting, I will go off and do something that’s very people centred because that’s the bit that I really enjoyed about my course and I’m a massive people watcher, I can sit in a café or in a street for hours, making up stories about how people live their lives, what they’re doing and I didn’t actually ever see that as taking me into real estate but from sociology, I worked in the Home Office, I worked in Crime and Policing, again all very people centred roles and from then on I fell into, literally fell into a role working for my Local Authority. I lived in Hackney, massive East London fan, and a job came up to work for Hackney Council and I thought ooh, that’s good, it’s up the road from me, I can walk to work, you know I can roll out of bed and be in work in the next fifteen minutes, that was my motivation but it happened to be in Housing, something that I knew nothing about, you know, I lived, I was brought up, I lived in Nigeria for many years and when I moved to England, I lived on a proper, inner city council housing estate, you know it was all the stereotypes that you can imagine it had but it also had abundance of community. I literally went to work on the job for no, with no understanding of housing and well, what an eye opener. I think that was for me was a foundation part of why I really enjoy this job because I worked for Hackney Council who had one of the biggest social housing portfolios in London, in the country, and lots and lots of the social challenges that we saw were, not directly related to housing but you could see how housing was a massive impact on improving people’s lives and that really stuck at me and I thought, gosh this is an industry I knew nothing about but actually, it has such a major role in how we can really transform our societies. So then my, the sociologist in me came out and said right, this is it, I’ve got to stay at this to really make a difference and I stuck at it till now.
Susan Freeman
And then how did you move from Hackney Council into development?
Olaide Oboh
Well I’ve been really fortunate that actually I’ve managed to move onto work on significant projects, so I was working for Hackney Council and as an Easter Londoner, I was completely blown away by the fact that you know the Olympics were coming to London. Not only coming to London but coming to my doorstep and I remember going on one of the tours, it was Open House London, and it had a tour, you can jump on a bus and go through the Olympic Park way before it was being transformed and developed, and I took one of those buses and I remember saying to myself, “I’m going to work on this, this is game changing”, not just because had all the shiny, sparkly buildings but I knew Stratford, I used to go to Stratford and I know how challenging that area was and still is to some extent but I remember thinking this is going to really make a difference, you know having a pub… a huge public park in the middle of Stratford where it was you know devoid of any green space, the ability to bring all you know this multi-million pound worth of infrastructure into this location was going to make a massive difference. I remember saying to myself, “I’m going to work on that” and I looked at it and that was probably three years before I started to work on it but I kept on saying to myself, “I really want to do that because I can see how that can really make a difference in this” and it wasn’t just to, you know the home borough was Newham but Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich were all going to be impacted positively by the Olympics so for me it was a once in a generation opportunity. So I stuck at that and I kept on looking at opportunities, looking at jobs and then an opportunity came up to work on the Olympic Village which was the original, first original set of homes that were built as long-term homes but actually were occupied by athletes during the Games and my role was to come in early, look at how we can make sure that they’re a community because we’d seen lots of previous Olympic villages that basically became white elephants, nothing happened to them, they weren’t built with a long-term plan of how are these going to be proper homes and communities for the future, so I was brought in to make sure that was part, the vision stayed, that as much as we wanted to deliver these homes for athletes during the two week period but you’ve got to make sure that all the right infrastructure is in place to make sure that people can live in them for many, many years to come, so that was what I was brought in to do. So, I came in early, I started in 2011, I didn’t get to go to any of the Games because that wasn’t part of my job and then post-Games, I worked with the team who actually worked to refurbish all the homes into proper, long-term homes and then we rented them out. I was really proud of that team because we had 50% affordable housing across the whole scheme and we were responsible for the affordable housing and that was social rent, old-school social rent, we had affordable rent and we had shared ownership and shared equity and I was responsible for letting them, communicating with the residents, moving them into their homes, helping them feel and bed into their community and really you know helping to create that place and I was, I’m really proud of that project, I still go to the Olympic Park today, I take my kids there, I was there a couple of weeks ago and this lovely little bakery called The Bakehouse and I sat there and my daughter rolled her eyes when I said, “I worked on that” and she was, “Mum, you’ve told me that fifteen times” and I was like “I’m going to keep on telling you that” and I walked, I was literally a few months ago, I was in the Olympic Park and I saw a family who’d moved in and their daughter was like two years old and it blew my mind because she was literally a teenager and I just thought, “Wow!” and you know, they’re thriving, they looked happy, I didn’t go and say, “I remember you,” I just saw her walking past and I was just, and that for me that’s the bit that makes our, the job, more than a job because you really, genuinely see how people’s lives have been transformed by you know, it’s a home but it’s also the community. That’s much more important.
Susan Freeman
I’m really pleased you mentioned East Village because we were involved with that scheme at Mishcons and I remember the first time going to actually see what had been built there before it was retrofitted and really believing there was going to be this amazing legacy from the Olympics because before that, you just thought, oh well, you know, as you say, we’ve seen what happened in other cities but then to actually see the Olympic Park, see what East Village was, it was just so inspiring. So for you to be involved in that project and it was the first Build to Rent project for the decades so, you know, landmarking in many ways. So, when I first met you a few years ago, you were I think Partnership Director at First Base, so tell me a little bit about the evolution and how Socius evolved out of First Base.
Olaide Oboh
Yes, of course. So I was with First Base for well over a decade and I learnt everything that I know now to be honest from First Base, and First Base was a real transformational developer. It really focussed on social value. How do we create places that are not just about the buildings? How do we make sure that we understand the needs of the wider community and make sure that the development is trying to address some of those needs? At first we were sort of mid-market developer, never focussed on prime, it was always about how do we deliver homes and places for people who are going to live here and that really stuck with me because you know we all see when developments start, are designed in effect for people who are not necessarily going to live there, they’re built, designed to be sold. First Base always focussed on real intimate focus on design, you’ve got to make sure you’re designing spaces for people and families and not super prime, you know, so I worked on schemes in Highbury Gardens, that was really a proud moment because we worked with, now King, but it was a build foundation for the Prince of Wales at the time and for mid-market homes, for people who wanted to live in London. Similarly, I also worked on a scheme in Elephant and Castle which was also housing. Our first place was a housing developer and you know I worked for many years and really loved it and I think over the years we started to realise partly out of East Village and also a project we worked on in the Royal Docks, was that for us to deliver long-term regeneration, we know that housing isn’t just a solution, you know people, and we’re seeing it now even more exacerbated by the cost of living crisis, we know that good quality jobs, skilling people up and housing are key to regenerating our towns and cities. Housing is just part of the solution, it isn’t the only solution. So for us, we started to look at how can we create a developer that focusses on that real mixed-use offer and for us, it has to be genuine mixed-use, we’re not talking about some flats with you know, with a Tesco Metro on the ground floor, we’re talking about a real mixed-use development that brings jobs and brings homes and you know skills people up, local people up, and response to what that that local need is. It’s not a, it worked there, it can work here, actually, it’s making sure that it’s responsive to that local area and that’s what Socius was borne out of and also, the real grounding and social impact, a real understanding of the local area or the local challenges and aspirations and make sure that the development is a vehicle to deliver that social impact. And that’s what Socius was borne out of, you know we decided to spin Socius out of First Base, to really focus on towns and urban centres, delivering mixed-use to regeneration and with that real focus on delivering social impact. And we’ve been at it for the best part of a couple of years now and we are, you know, working across some really interesting cities, all with similar or differing challenges and we’re looking at how we can help being a part of helping to address some of those.
Susan Freeman
And I think Socius has been set up in a way that its articles require the directors to consider not just shareholders but all stakeholders and the environment, so that is the basis of every decision you make at Socius.
Olaide Oboh
Correct, correct. We are B Corp and our articles of association clearly state that, so when we are making decision, we are making wider considerations, it’s not just about the shareholders’ interests, it’s also about the community and importantly, about the climate as well. So, it means that we have a much more responsible approach to making decisions and it, for us, it balances us, it gives us that external ability to look, not just an inward look, certainly looking externally to make sure that those decisions are much more rounded.
Susan Freeman
When you explain it like that and why housing isn’t just the solution on its own, it’s got to be part of a community, there have got to be jobs and there have got to be things that attract people to the area, I mean it just makes so much sense doesn’t it.
Olaide Oboh
It does because I think when you, it’s very easy for us to create headlines around we need to deliver more housing and I fundamentally believe it, I live in London, I work in lots of major cities like Brighton and Bristol and homelessness is a major issue, we can’t deny the fact that you know we do have a housing crisis but I think it’s a very binary discussion and actually if we just focus on housing, we forget all the other things because one thing we’ve learned from my experience is, whilst you can help someone and find them a home, if you don’t support them with all the other things they need in their life then actually, that home doesn’t provide a stable feature for them because then they can’t pay the rent and they can’t afford to pay the rent and then they’re in this cycle and actually what we’ve got to do is create the right balance so, for example, in, and the way we do that is by making sure that we’re providing a physical environment for jobs so that we can attract the businesses to come there and create the jobs but at the same time we are working locally to skill people up for those jobs and encouraging people not to leave because you know London is a small place or, you know, we work in Cambridge and Bristol and Brighton, there’s a tendency to go somewhere else to find good jobs which impacts on the town or city that you’re working in, so for example in Brighton, Brighton is 40 minutes away on the train into London, I’ve got lots of friends who live in Brighton but who work in London and that’s a major, that brain drain that leaves Brighton without pounds drain as well, people are leaving in the morning and spending all their money and their time in another city which means actually that city loses out on, that local economy there is starved of all that cash and all of that knowledge as well and what Brighton said to us when we started working in Brighton is, we want Brighton to be seen as a serious place for business, you know we’re a seaside town with that perception of our, you know, it’s a seaside down, what we need is big businesses to come, wanting to come to Brighton and see it as a serious place to invest. We could deliver a load of housing in Brighton because you know who doesn’t want to live in Brighton. We decided to deliver 180,000 square feet of office, we did that with Patron Capital and we delivered 160 homes and that means that what we’re creating is the jobs, you know because we now have a local business who’s now expanded and grown, they’ve taken a lot of space, they’ve employed local people and they’ve definitely created a base in Brighton and made Brighton their home. We’ve created homes, real mixed tenure, one thing we’re always passionate about is real proper mixed tenure, also whether it is affordable for rent, we’ve got standard PRS for Build to Rent, we have homes for sale and we have shared ownership and that’s making sure that homes are accessible for people across all different life stages, so whether you can afford to save for a deposit to buy or if you’ve afforded to save a deposit to rent, it means that it’s accessible and that accessibility to housing is key because what we find is a real, again it’s very binary, you’ve got save a hundred grand to buy a house or and then the mortgage rates are high, prices you out, or you’ve got to save a lot to go into part of sale. Actually what’s the option if you can’t do that and we’ve got to fine reach for that when we’re developing new places, we’re thinking about mixed tenure offer as well. So somewhere like Brighton, our scheme in Brighton at Edward Street Quarter, we responded to what Brighton wanted. Brighton wanted to be seen for serious business, we delivered good quality, grade A spec office in Brighton and it was occupied, you know fully occupied and they wanted to see good quality housing that could attract local people and create that real community and it did that, so that’s how we respond and that’s why we make sure that we’re delivering a proper response for regeneration in our towns and cities.
Susan Freeman
So I think with Brighton, it’s the largest speculative office development in 25 years in Brighton as well as providing the housing. So is that what Brighton wanted when you started talking to them about what you were planning on site?
Olaide Oboh
Brighton wanted to seem seriously as a place, a business destination. They’d been worried because the economy is based on tourism and as we know, look at the summer we’ve had this year, you only need two weeks of rain and actually Brighton suffers. Brighton also is known for big, major events, so you know you’ve got party conferences going down there, big events happen but again those are seasonal, sometimes those don’t happen, they go to other towns and cities so Brighton needs that stable economy throughout the year, they also wanted to retain people in Brighton because of that proximity to London, people are jumping on the train and going into London and earning a bit more so that’s what Brighton said to us, and we said well, the only way we can address some of these issues is by delivering high quality, grade A, good quality office space which will attract major businesses, who will actually move from somewhere else or if they’re already in Brighton, they will see that as opportunity to grow. When we spoke to businesses in Brighton, they said we’d like to grow but there’s not good enough space so we’re leaving, we going to Crawley or we’re going to Gatwick because actually there’s no quality space in Brighton for us to go into or there’s no space of scale. So we did all our research, you know we are really passionate about boots on the ground, go and speak to people, understand what that local need is and also understand what the aspirations and ambitions are and by packaging what the council wanted with what local business need, we were able to confidently go and deliver spec office, which you know is a big ask but actually we could see that by delivering that quality space, we knew that there was a market there for it and as I said, this space was taken up, Brighton are happy because not only do they have high quality space but high quality office which they can now set as a benchmark for other people to come and deliver into Brighton, they now have good business rates and you know jobs are in a city, people are spending money locally and it’s really, it’s starting to transform that local economy and they’re now seeing it as a real asset. So absolutely, Brighton has been very supportive of it so far and they are keen for that to continue to happen in the city and that’s how we transform towns and city centres, you know you’ve got to provide that mixed use because the council now benefits and not only the new homes bonus, there was the benefit from Council Tax, benefit from business rates, you have local people are going to spend money locally in the local shops, it’s a win, win.
Susan Freeman
And I haven’t seen the scheme but do you have the sort of offices separate from the residential part? How do you separate it?
Olaide Oboh
Yep, we have buildings that are dedicated of office and then we have buildings that are dedicated of residential. We have shared communal areas. All the communal areas are shared for office and the residential. We also have a shared app, so anyone who lives or works or visits there can access the app and they can get to know one another, join in the, you know there’s a walking group every Tuesday morning at 10.00, you can pop along and join that irrespective of who you are. We have people who live and work there so, I met someone the other day who said, “I have the shortest commute in the world”, he literally pops out of his building and walks into his office, literally takes him 2 minutes, he said he goes in his slippers it’s that close. But actually that community, you know the sense of community is what we’ve been really proud of, you know and people who, you know you might work for 8 hours a day but actually you feel like you’re part of the place because you know what’s going on and you see people walking their dogs through the scheme or people sitting having a chat with their neighbours but actually creating that community has been key but actually it’s, the set up has all been well designed so everyone has their dedicated entrances, if you work there or if you live there but you have that communal external space that everyone can enjoy and also not just for people who live and work there, importantly for the surrounding neighbours to also come in and access, it’s all open and accessible, no gates, all kind of for everyone to really enjoy.
Susan Freeman
I was also looking at your scheme or one of your schemes in Cambridge, Devonshire Gardens, where you’re working with Railpen and it’s also I think a mixed-use work space and homes and is going to deliver over 1,500 jobs and I was just looking at what you were saying about social value because on that scheme, you say that social value is going to be in excess of £100 million and I just wondered how you measure that social value, it must be difficult.
Olaide Oboh
It’s really difficult. I think Devonshire Garden scheme is one of those schemes that you, was founded on social value. Now Cambridge is a great city and we all love it. It has, you know, it is an internationally renowned city but actually on the ground, Cambridge has lots of social issues. Cambridge is one of the most unequal cities in the whole of England. The average income in Cambridge is very low but actually there are lots of people who live in Cambridge are very wealthy. So when you walk around Cambridge, most people who are there can’t, people who are working in Cambridge who work for the hospital, who work for the University in standard, normal jobs, can’t afford to live in Cambridge, they commute in. So, we started that on that journey going, gosh, as much as Cambridge is internationally a great city to be in, we’ve got to address some of these really localised issues because actually this is so unaffordable that no one actually lives here. So, similarly, in Cambridge we could have delivered a load of homes for sale because there’s definitely demand to buy a home in Cambridge, you know everywhere but we decided to deliver Build to Rent with affordable housing in there, with a real focus on supporting local key workers so that people who work in Cambridge can afford to live in Cambridge. Similarly, when we spoke to lots of local people in the area, we asked them about where do you go to hang out? The scheme is right next to the train station and if you know Cambridge, you’re probably thinking about Parker’s Piece and all the big green spaces. Actually, right next to the station, there isn’t really that much green space, it’s very heavily built up and the response we got was, oh we go to the cemetery. Now the cemetery is beautiful, it’s a listed cemetery but it’s a cemetery, you know you don’t really want to walk around a cemetery with your child or your parent, it’s just not the right environment. So, as a direct response to that, we dedicated half of the scheme to an open public park, now land prices in Cambridge are high so that was a big ask and that was a significant for our investors, Railpen, to decide to do that but it was a recognition of the desire to deliver the social value that we’re talking about. If you want to properly make a difference to delivering social value, you’ve got to make those big, bold moves. So, delivering half of the site for a public park means that you know you don’t make as much money as you want to but actually the long-term returns for that are much more beneficial, so just basic, biodiversity, you know the scheme is delivering over 400% biodiversity increase and that’s important at the moment for our climate, we know we need that, especially in urban spaces, especially where you are next to train station and next to a very heavily congested part of town, so the long-term benefits of that are much more important. Similarly, we’ve got office space, we’ve got homes there but the other thing that’s really exciting there is we’ve got lots of ground floor retail units and there’s everything, all the ground floor retail units on that scheme are dedicated to affordable workspace and we’re also delivering a children’s creche and nursery. Again, directly addressing the social challenges that we know we have. Childcare is expensive in Cambridge and workspace is expensive in Cambridge and we’re trying to retain people to work in Cambridge and to stay in Cambridge, we’ve got to deliver discounted workspace and also provide the childcare and a social infrastructure that people need to help enable that to happen and that’s how we tot up the social value contribution, so everything from affordable workspace, artist space, access to green space, childcare, all of those things go into our social value action plan, we measure that and then that throws up that number. I’m not a big fan of that number, I think numbers can be, they don’t mean much if you’re much more focussed on people, they just sound like a nice big number that you put in a report, so I look at the actual what sits beneath that number and I know is a significant amount of jobs, it’s apprenticeships, it’s skilling people up but it’s also things like, you know we’ve got food growing beds in the scheme so we can, we’re working with a local company called CoFarm, they come in and create these food growing beds, alongside of food growing beds we’ve got community kitchen so we grow the food and take people in, you learn how to cook the food so cooking healthy food, teaching children, families, parents, teachers about healthy eating. So, for me, those types of local things are much more important than that big number but actually they make a generational impact, it’s not just about teaching one person, that person now understands the basics, the fundamentals of healthy eating and will teach other people about it, those are much more important, so but we’ve got to put that infrastructure in to enable these things to happen and that’s where the social value really comes in its own.
Susan Freeman
And the idea of having a creche, I think is so important because you just keep hearing now about how expensive childcare is and that you know people you know are finding it difficult to go back to work because it doesn’t make any financial sense so…
Olaide Oboh
Absolutely. Yeah, so we think actually creches should be a, you know we think about all the challenges we have in terms of that’s it either creches, commuting etcetera, we’ve got to make it easier and actually childcare should be, and I think when we talked about mixed-use schemes, we are really, really open-minded about what mixed-use means, I think in our industry it’s you’ve got an office and you’ve got some flats or you know you have flats, you have a shop at the bottom, we are so broad in our understanding of what mixed-use is. For us, the public park is a part of a mixed-use development, it’s a functional space that everyone can use and what do parks do, as mentioned, we’ve got food growing beds in there, we’ve got public art in there, it will have outdoor gyms, there’s a wellbeing space, actually it’s doing much more than just a park but that’s part of our mixed-use space because for us that’s the glue that connects everyone together, you know, if you drop your child off at the nursery, you might go and have a coffee and sit in the park and talk to another parent or talk to someone else, that’s all the bits, the social infrastructure we’ve got to put in our communities to help drive that social value and make it, you know make people want to be in that place and make it a much more sustainable place long-term. So I agree with you, children’s nurseries and someone who’s just come out that nursery period, they’re expensive, you know it’s difficult to find and actually putting them into our, into developments, it’s a no brainer.
Susan Freeman
I was just, as you were speaking, I was just thinking just in terms of what people want from the way they work, the way they live, how are you seeing things change, you know a couple of years post-Covid and lockdown because things like parks and green spaces suddenly became so important to people, whereas you know previously, one might not have thought about it in quite the same way.
Olaide Oboh
Well for sure, I think we are definitely going through, we’ve all gone through a lot of change in a really short period of time and I think we’re just about now all getting comfortable with what we think is the new norm, whatever that is, but I think the rapid change we all went through was a bit of a shock to the system and I think we’ve certainly seen in the work that we’re doing, we’re seeing different demands from our occupiers and our residents or our commercial space occupiers as well and I think, I think it can only be a good thing actually, I think for example, I think we used to have a bit of a passive relationship where you know developers were, this is what we do, this is what you get for your money and basically, take it or leave it. I think what we’re seeing is a much more enlightened audience, whether that’s as commercial, residential or occupiers. I’ll give you for example, I think you know we are committed to net zero carbon by 2030, fundamentally design all our schemes to ensure that that can happen from the physical perspective but there’s all the education that needs to go to support our residents to get to that. We are seeing residents and occupiers asking us about that now in 2023 saying, if I commit to buying this home, renting this home or renting this office space, I want to be net zero by 2030. What is your building and what is your scheme going to do to enable me to do that? We didn’t get those questions five years ago. We just about you know, most developers just about knew what the energy efficiency of their building was and it was a tick box because I have to do it, now, we are all so much more sophisticated and better understand energy efficiency, performance, and every accreditation going as nejghbours, BREEAM Outstanding and what that actually means from a real perspective, not just I’ve ticked the box, it’s actually this is you know this is a carbon reduction, this is what it means to not have air conditioning units and we’re having artist units whatever, we now know that better and I think that’s been, part of that’s been driven by the occupiers, it’s not necessarily by us, it’s the occupiers pushing us and also I think, which I think is a good thing. Similarly, on social value, you know we have a much more enlightened customer base now who are saying well I can choose where I buy my home or where I choose to go to spend my time. So I want to know actually, what are you doing for your local community, you know what does it mean when you talk about social value and how can get involved so I think we’ve seen a much more, we talk about citizenship, that’s much more come to the forefront and again I think that can only be a good thing, it’s good to see that. I think we’re, you know, the challenges some of us are facing is understanding where things like how long are people going to spend in the offices, is it three days a week, is it four days a week, is it one, is it not and I just think it you know that flexibility is going to be key, you know we’re delivering over a million square feet of office whether it’s in Cambridge, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Brighton, so we’re having to really kind of understand what that means in the future and how do we make our spaces flexible enough to support whatever if demands grow or demands shrink. So those are challenging times and we’re all not, we’re not sure where we are yet but I think the fundamental is flexibility, continue to listen, you know we’ve got to keep understanding how not just trends but how people are choosing to change the way they work or not work and also you not just having a one size fits all because we’ve moved from that now, it’s not a you get this and that’s it, you’ve got to, so you listen to your occupier, know what they need and importantly, understand that their staff have a bigger role to play now in the way that we make decisions about offices certainly and from a residential perspective, it’s not just about the home, the community is as much more important, so that’s what we’re learning but it’s ongoing learning, it doesn’t stop.
Susan Freeman
No I was interested because you’ve said that the best offices now have much more soul and I wondered what you meant by that in terms of what people are looking for from their offices now.
Olaide Oboh
Gone are the days of you know me turning up to work at 9.00 o’clock, sitting at my desk all day, my own desk, sitting there all day, you know going to grab a sandwich at lunch and then leaving at 5.00. We are seeing that people are demanding much more from offices, this was pre-Covid as well, but post-Covid people will come to the office because it does more than just give me a desk and I’ll sit there, so when I talk about the soul of the office I think it’s about the you know what else is this going to do for me, I don’t want to sit at a desk all day, I want to collaborate with other people, I want to people watch, you know fact, you know and also the real kind of oh it’s got to have a Ping-Pong table and we’re going to sit in a corner playing games all day, no, it’s about, it’s the hotelification of offices, you know it’s the quality of the space, I don’t want to sit in an uncomfortable, horrible chair all day, I want it to be a nice space to be in, I want to be visually stimulated by that space, art and culture, that’s important. I want my office to also improve my health and wellbeing so if I’m passionate about, you know if that’s important to me that has, it has to support my lifestyle so whether it’s the gym, wellness, Pilates, those things should be available to me and also importantly, my value system has to be supportive in my office, so if I’m passionate about climate change, for example, we work from a For a and one of the reasons we work in a For a is because they’re a B Corp and they are transparent about their environmental targets. That’s important to us as a business because those are fundamental to who we were set up so, I want to align my values to where I work, so that’s becoming a lot more important so for me, that’s the soul because it means that I’m going to environment that supports the things that I believe in rather than contradicting it and if it’s important to me, I think it should be important to the place that you work in or the business that you work or the environment that choose to spend your time in. So that for me is the soul.
Susan Freeman
And in your role you lead partnerships between public sector, private sector, do you find that there are real differences between the public and private sector and is trust an issue?
Olaide Oboh
I am fortunate I have worked in both public and private sector and I can see how each sector precedes one another. I think for me trust is a major issue and unfortunately it’s because when both sectors come at it not trusting one another so my perception is always you’ve got to start from a blank sheet of paper and have a, build relationships, have honest an conversation, honesty has to be key and make sure fundamentally that we’re both trying to get to the end goal and agree on what that end goal is, so my approach to partnership is always we’re both trying to get to the same place, you know that’s our fundamental, what is that we all want to achieve and then really be clear about each of our role is in achieving that goal, so we’re not tripping up on one another, we’re not trying to do each other’s jobs and then actually, we can trust each other to get on with things that we know want to do well and be really clear about that and also importantly, one thing I learned when I did lots of public sector work, joint ventures with First Base, was always around let’s also talk about conflict resolution from Day One because it’s going to happen, you know whether we like it or not, we’re going to butt heads at some point, so rather than pretending that we’re you know rose tinted glasses, it’s a perfect marriage and we’re not going to have problems, we are, so let’s talk about what that means, how are we going to address issues and let’s be frank and honest about what you know how we’re going to deal with them, you know so that when it does happen, we’ll go right, let’s pull out tool out the box, we said we’re going to do this, we’re going to sit down and have a conversation, this is how we’re going to, and just be really open and honest. I always talk about development and partnerships are like a relationship and also take the time to date first, actually because you can’t work with everyone, it’s just, a lot of what I do, we talked about my role as partnerships, head of partnerships, I go into lots of places, lots of local authorities, investors, land owners, and we date, I figure out if we like each other, do you like me, do I like you, do I trust you, do I think that actually you can help me or you can add to me or do I think I can help you add to, if we can’t then there’s no, we’ll happily just say we won’t work together because there’s no point in you know if you don’t like someone in the dating stage, why do you want to enter in a long-term relationship let alone a marriage because a lot of our developments are long-term relationships, they are fifteen, twenty year projects that will take a long so you’ve got to make sure that that person that you dated, you’re going to like them over that period of time and there are fundamental basics in things, right, their value system, the things that they see as important, how do they deal with conflict, all of those are just as important in a, to use a relationship analogy, just as important in a working partnership, we’ve got to make sure that those things, we’re on the same page or at least we both agree about how we’re going to deal with those things, so I focus a lot on that and that’s why trust is one part of it and I think if we can’t both trust one another then there’s no point us even going into the relationship, let’s just agree that, maybe not now, maybe at a different stage but I do think the private sector has to do more to demonstrate that they are trustworthy because unfortunately, because I’ve worked in the private sector more now, I’ve seen a lots of instances of the private sector just being basic, horrible people, you know, and sometimes that’s because you know people are trying to win a deal and they’ll say anything to get it over the line or people you know just are just horrible and actually you know, we’ve got a, and I know that I’ve had to, in lots of conversations with the public sector, I’ve had to really kind of demonstrate my trust rather than just saying it, so a perfect example is in Brighton, when I worked in Brighton we delivered a scheme, we got consent for a scheme and it was you know 200 homes, Brighton’s affordable housing policy was 35% but under viability, the maximum we could deliver was 25% and that was fine but I remember a planning committee, it was one of the members who didn’t support the scheme, said I’ve seen developers like this before, they’ll renegotiate affordable housing to nothing, they probably won’t even deliver the scheme and will be sat there, you know a white elephant for ages and Brighton will end up with nothing as usual because this is what developers like this do, you know because he was just like I just don’t believe you and I remember because our scheme in Edward Street Quarter in Brighton, he then became the Leader of the Council, just you know he was on the Planning Committee and then he was Leader of the Council and I took him round the site when it was finished and he said to me, I will take my hat off, you did not renegotiate the affordable housing, you delivered the scheme to the quality that you said you would do and I remember they made us condition the materiality, the tiling on the buildings and you’ve done it, it’s been delivered and now people are living here, working here and you’ve done what you said you would do, I take my hat off, I just didn’t believe that people would do it. And sometimes you’ve got to demonstrate that you know you are trustworthy rather than just saying it because actually just anyone can say it but you’ve got to practice what you preach and so I’m always a big fan of just saying actually, either go and look at what we’ve delivered or speak to people who we’ve worked with, you know put a time in your diaries to do it, just have talks whenever you want to. So then we’ve got to work harder to demonstrate that we are trustworthy, the industry has lots of unfortunates, I must say so.
Susan Freeman
This is true and so using your dating analogy, if the first date doesn’t go terribly well, I mean this is presumably part of your decision-making as to whether to go ahead with a project.
Olaide Oboh
Oh 100% and I think we’ve got a choice and yeah so we’re B Corp articles and associations that we consider more than just profit, so fundamentally we’ll walk away from it, we’re not in any way bound to work with it if we don’t think we can work together and I’ve done that before on a couple of schemes where for example, I worked on a scheme in a borough, I will remain nameless, and actually the Leader of the Council was, his value system was completely misaligned to ours, I found him to be a completely every ism I can possible think about, he was, and it was very uncomfortable sitting in meetings where he would express his views in a way that I thought were very inappropriate and that I decided that actually our business is a value driven business and I can’t be seen to be, I can’t be working, not only seen, I can’t be working in a place where those types of views are freely espoused so, we walked away from it and I think we should do that more because my thing was, if we are willing to accept this at this stage, at the dating stage, it’s only going to get worse and I have to stand in front of my staff and deal with issues where they’re going to come back and say oh gosh, this has happened, what do we do, you know it’s just not worth it so, and that’s at that point much more of a you know values thing but actually sometimes it is actually just us completely disagreeing on how we think this should work and I think it’s important to be, at the outset, put all your cards on the table, everyone’s really clear about what we’re trying to achieve here, so sometimes it is what we’re trying to achieve or I might say we always have really big ambitions for our schemes and they’re usually not about the building, you know we might talk of Devonshire Gardens for example, it’s about you know, we want to deliver social value, it needs significant social value in the local area, how do we do that, then we look at the building, the park, the public space etcetera. Our partner might say actually no, we want to deliver you know 1500 buildings and 300 homes and we’re saying well, if you start there, you’ve missed the vision, that can be our difference of opinion but obviously we try and work through these things but there’s a point where you have to say we were completely growing in different directions so let’s just park it and you know you might come back in the future or you might not.
Susan Freeman
So, you somehow find time to mentor younger people and you said that one of your biggest learnings is that sometimes you must fail to succeed and firstly I wondered why that was so important but have there been things that you have failed on where you thought actually, this has been good for me, you know it hasn’t gone the way I wanted it to go but it’s a good thing.
Olaide Oboh
That’s a good question. I think as a developer you work on many projects, sometimes you never like quite take them to where you want them to and one that’s you know always sticks to my heart because I worked on it for a long time, was Silvertown Quays in the Royal Docks. It was a huge project and it was game changing. I learned a lot from the project, I worked with Stuart Lipton who is you know industry senior, knows so much and I learned so much from him and that was a project I really loved and I led the planning alongside a couple of my colleagues, led the planning on that and you know we got government funding to get infrastructure and the reason why was because the site had been so many opportunities have on this site haven’t been delivered, it had been empty for years and when you really go into the detail of the Royal Docks, it has lots of deprivation and it felt like this site could really help to start to address some of those generational issues in this part of town, so I was fully invested, I really was, you know I spent hours and hours working on this because I really wanted it to be successful and we were, we managed to bid of one of the biggest planning consents in London so we were really proud of that because that took years and we unlocked it but from flipping from planning to delivery was the bit that I felt I just, I couldn’t succeed on and that was hard, it was really hard because I didn’t, I didn’t work on it to step out of it, I worked on it to deliver it and to see it come to its own and to really deliver on the jobs, the economic growth in that part of Royal Docks so eventually we, we didn’t work on it and we stepped out and sold it on to another company, who are actually delivering it now so it is happening but I think for me, it felt like a failure at the time because I didn’t deliver on what I had set out to do but the flip side is, I learned so much. I think that for me that was that spurred us on for Socius because Silvertown was built on a mixed-use place, it was you know again Newham as a council had said we can have a look, you know Newham has, like every London borough, has a housing crisis but actually if you look at the demographic in this area, it’s generation and generation of deprivation of poverty and property poverty, we’ve got to change this, you know we are right next to Canary Wharf, we’re next to City Airport, you know why can’t this area be the next economic powerhouse for London, why can’t it deliver proper, good quality jobs to pull these people out of poverty. We were like sold, we love it, this is exactly what we should be doing, so we designed a full on, mixed-use scheme with some housing, a load of top quality work space, what we called Showrooms, which was about you know what you’re seeing all around the world now, was you know changing the dynamic in terms of retail and online shopping and that was for me we learned so much about actually this is how our society is moving so I learned so much, so actually when it was time to set up Socius, we were like we know this, we do well, this is exactly what we should be doing. So, whilst it was, for me, it wasn’t a success from my perspective, I learned so much and the learning opportunity it gave me was tremendous, the exposure it gave me, the ability to work with you know we worked with some amazing architects on that scheme, you know spending time with senior, experienced industry experts like this with Stuart Lipton, Peter Rogers, you know was tremendous experience so, in the long-term I really enjoyed it and that’s why when I speak to my mentee, I was speaking to her at the time when she was waiting for her GCSE results and she was just really nervous and you know and I was trying to say her to look, I don’t know what GCSEs are, I don’t know what I got for my GCSEs so, but of course that’s the most important thing to her at that time and I had to say to her, do you know what, if you really work, sometimes you do have to fail to succeed, you might see it as a failure you know but the learning experience you are going to gain in that is going to be tremendous and you will look back and go, you know what, it was worth it.
Susan Freeman
And it sounds as if Silvertown was just ahead of its time as well in many ways. And just listening to you, you know talking about your schemes, I’m just wondering, is there a secret ingredient to successful placemaking, I mean what actually makes a place tick?
Olaide Oboh
It’s people. People are the ingredient that make a place, it’s not the buildings, it’s not the design, it’s not the groomed space, it’s the people and when you start with the people, all of those things happen and we make a lot of effort and spend a lot of time speaking to, listening, importantly listening first, before speaking, listening to people and understanding what they want, what they need, what their ambition and aspirations are and then we turn that into, actually how does that manifest itself in a physical place because if you don’t get the people right and understand what the people want, you’re just creating a place that people won’t fall in love with and they won’t buy into it and won’t see it as their own and that for is the only ingredient you’re going to focus on and the problem is we, our industry normally, we’ve gone ten steps ahead before we go, oh yeah, people, who’s going to live here again, who’s going to work here again, you know and that’s because of the way our model is built, we go, you know. So, we take a step back and we start with all of those and we know that by doing that we can create successful places and successful places are, they’re not just successful on Day 1 because again, we tend to kind of focus on the big, shiny opening, oh it’s built and it’s finished and it’s amazing, which is great but it’s more important in fifteen years’ time that for me is also success because then all those people are now invested, embedded and it’s their home and they’re part of it and they’ve built their family, their friends, all of that is, that’s what successful places are and that’s when I talked about East Village, when I go to East Village now and I’m just a you know a visitor and I sit on a bench and I look around I see people living their life and enjoying their life and surviving, that is a successful place, the buildings are irrelevant to that, the buildings just happen to house people and they sit in there but how people’s lives have been transformed, I remember stories of people who had been in temporary housing for five, six years and they managed to get a home in the Olympic Park and they completely transformed their life and there are stories of people who now work in the Aquatic Centre who had never swam before in their life but now they’ve learned to swim, I mean, real life changing things that we might see as minor but actually make a massive difference to how you know to people’s life chances and generational impact, so we need that, the secret source and the key coming in, it’s understanding people and responding to people’s needs.
Susan Freeman
And when you talk about it like that, you know, it sounds that being involved in creating these places where you know people spend most of their lives, is just an exciting thing to do but we seem to be quite not so good at actually selling that story to, you know, young people you know who might want to come into real estate, I mean what’s your advice to young people and you know particularly women who might you know listen to you and think well, where do I start?
Olaide Oboh
I believe our industry does have a bit of a challenge in attracting people and that’s everything from like you know when I talk to our construction teams, you know the perception is you’re on a windy, dirty building site for hours and you know young people go, oh, I could earn double that on Instagram as an influencer, I’d rather do that, so that, you know and it’s about how do we, construction hasn’t modernised, we are getting better, you know we’ve got MMC but we haven’t modernised enough to attract the younger generations who go well, you know, I’d rather sit in a nice comfy house thank you very much, so that has to, there’s a whole challenge there but I also think the variety of roles in real estate is just not understood, I genuinely didn’t have a clue that this was a potential career option for me when I was in school or university, I didn’t even know what housing, there was like a housing industry if you want to call it that, I just you know never understood it and I think we’ve got to get better at helping people understand that so we, personally, I do a lot of work in local schools, I go into schools and I talk to them about what I do and it’s amazing how when I talk, I work in real estate or I do this, I go to like primary schools and secondary schools and it’s fascinating the questions you get asked but I think we’ve got to get better at going out and having those conversations in schools and professionalising a lot of our work and we’ve got like obviously, surveyors and etcetera but we’ve got to make sure that the breadth of the roles in our industries are better understood and we have a response, I think we have a responsibility to go and educate people to go out into schools, so interestingly as part of some of the things that we’ve introduced in our company is anyone who works with us has to go out and do schools engagement, so you’ve got to do one, two, four hours, it depends on what we sign you up for, to go into schools either in our projects or anywhere else and the purpose of that is to do assemblies, is to do careers days, is to do workshops and it’s about passing that knowledge on and just helping people understand that you could actually be a landscape architect or you can be a sales and marketing manager or you can actually be an architect, drawing buildings or you could be a lawyer, you could be the legal transactions or you can be an accountant, the raft of roles and roles in our industry are so broad but we’ve got to make sure that we should be responsible making sure that we educate people better so they know what those are.
Susan Freeman
You are absolutely, absolutely…
Olaide Oboh
Even more importantly for girls, I think because you know we work in an industry that is very male dominant and I go into lots of spaces where I’m the only female, the only woman in a room and no one, and there’s a perception about the role that I do and have to remind people that no, that’s not what I do because a traditional role for women in our industry are very fixed so again, making sure that we help people see that in a different way is really important.
Susan Freeman
And I have a final question for you. So, you engage with people and communities to identify you know what they’re going to want effectively in the future because you’re building for the future, so are there any new trends emerging that you are, you know you’re beginning to see that we’re going to be seeing you know over the next few years that you can tell us about?
Olaide Oboh
I think what we’re going to see, I think I mentioned earlier that people have become more, much more enlightened, I think we’re going to see more focus on air quality, we saw a lot of that during, right through the pandemic, we’re seeing that now, people are looking for air quality, air filtration systems within their homes because we walk around at the moment, if you don’t have any kind of respiratory issue or asthma etcetera, you just, you walk around our urban spaces, fine, it’s only when you go and get a check and someone says to you gosh, you know you’ve got the lungs of a sixty year old and that’s because we are consuming and inhaling a lot of really, really toxic air, so we’re starting to see that, that’s probably going to come in where people are saying actually, I want to make sure that my home is clean or my workspace is clean, well at least I’m informed about what that is so I can make better decisions about how I choose, I might decide I’m not commuting today because it looks like the air quality levels are really, really poor so I’m going to work from a different place today, so we’re seeing a lot of that coming in for sure. Again, I mention around sustainability, there’s a super focus on biodiversity because nature and benefits of nature are now becoming better understood, especially in city centres. Gone are the days of we’ve got to build on every single possible piece of land, you know biodiversity, ability to attract nature, birds, bees, back into our cities and I read a stat the other day and I suddenly stopped and said gosh, that’s true, when is the last time you actually heard a bird in your, you know, you don’t hear birds anymore or when’s the last time that you know you went oh that annoying bee, it’s very rare because we, you know, our environment has driven them of our city centres so attracting that back is a key priority and that’s a big trend, not trend, but we’re seeing that becoming much more priority, certainly from public centre and in planning but also we’ve got to do better on it because if we’re trying to hit some of our targets we have from a sustainability perspective, so yeah and I think definitely we have a generation, a mixed generation in our town and city centres now but a lot of our generation are so digitally conscious and digitally aware that as a real estate industry, we’ve got to get better at being there and it’s not just oh, let’s go and advertise in this on Facebook and Instagram, it’s about understanding that lots of peoples lives are led digitally, so we’ve got make sure that whatever we’re doing has that digital footprint as well, so everything from ChatGPT to AI, what does that mean for our industry, how can we use it to better improve some of the systems and the processes or the service that we’re providing to our customers so, not just going oh it’s for those young people, actually you know we’ve got our, we’ve done some senior living schemes as well, so everyone across the whole spectrum are very much digitally aware, so we’ve got to make sure that we’re better at that as well because that is the reality, it’s not going anywhere, so it’s part and parcel of our life so make sure that we are embedding it.
Susan Freeman
Okay. Thank you very much.
Olaide Oboh
Thank you, Susan, that’s been really helpful and enjoyable conversation.
Susan Freeman
Thank you so much, Olaide, for your insights into how you work in partnership to create successful mixed-use urban development that delivers real social impact.
So, that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed today’s conversation. Please join us for the next PropertyShe podcast interview coming very soon.
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