Testimonial
“What I like best about Keith is that he has a sense of humor that he keeps while doing excellent work. When you’re on these complex jobs all day every day, [humor] helps. He expects excellence, but he recognizes others who really stand out. He’s someone who can work on big-picture strategy, but he also knows how to get to work and execute.”
Jacinta McCann
Executive VP
AECOM
I bought a newspaper one day and was reading it on the way home when I saw a Shell job listing for an electrical mechanical engineer. I thought I’d apply for the job and wound up getting it. That was in 1988, and I’ve been with the company ever since.
I didn’t have a whole lot of experience back then. I was born in London and never did that well in school. I did know, however, that I was interested in engineering. At age 16, I started an apprenticeship at a large company and attended college on a sponsored education. I ended up working 10 years with that company before moving to a position with the UK government’s Property Services Agency. I was in this role when I saw the job listing for Shell and decided to apply. Since then, I’ve had the great fortune to work across every sector in the industry and in every region with the company. I moved from the UK to the United States in 2002 and then transitioned to Asia from 2007 to 2010. After that, I returned to the US and still consider it home.
I’ve been involved in some of our largest real estate projects, and I think that experience is an enormous asset for me now as VP of real estate. I started in engineering facilities and moved to project management before I began heading up bigger developments. I was working on a big investment in the Hague when my boss presented an opportunity for me to relocate to the US to gain transactions experience. From there, I was put in charge of the Asia Pacific Region before moving to my current global role in 2009.
My time in the United States was very foundational for the way we operate. We changed the way that we put large real estate projects together in the US by asking the business to step back and allow us to deliver their real estate solutions for them. This was the start of our journey to becoming a professional function within Shell, supporting the mainstream businesses in the same way you would expect from HR, IT, finance, and other functions. My boss should get all the credit for really driving us hard in that space, and we have come a very long way. In 2009, we went from a regional structure—where the regional manager was accountable for the whole real estate remit—to a very different role where standardization and simplification are key. I became VP to lead real estate transactions and projects across the globe with a great team that has now grown to more than 80 people.
Our focus is to protect Shell’s interests and investments in the whole real estate arena. Until we made that change, we were always negotiating with the business regarding how much influence we had. Fast-forward to today, and we have a responsibility to ensure the business receives a professional service to meet the business needs. It all goes hand in hand.
In the US, we also totally changed the way we work with developers, and it is a model we take as wide as we can as opportunities present themselves. One size does not fit all, but for me, on large projects, the developer model would be the preference. They do what a regular developer would do with investors, but they do it with our money. This leverages our low cost of capital. The model is still maturing and is gaining wider interest.
Testimonial
“Keith is thoughtful and comes at projects with a refreshing approach. We’ve never felt like we are working with a large firm that makes edicts from on high. We know that he understands the market and allows us to prescribe an optimized process. Keith and the real estate group made a huge change in how Shell develops its projects. It’s not disconnected, disjointed, or canned. He changed the way Shell sources its projects, and not many other leaders could have pulled that off. When Shell started to do this, they defined a new strategy that works.”
John Mooz
Senior VP
Hines
One of the first places we tried this was in Houston with Hines, the developer for our upstream business campus. It really paves the way to delivering projects on budget and on time with minimal involvement for the business so that they can get on with their day job, which is driving revenues and protecting the interest of our shareholders.
We’re no longer building facilities that are tied forever to Shell. Instead, wherever possible, we create market solutions and buildings that we can sell or lease in the marketplace if Shell exits the property. The Houston project is known as Woodcreek. The pilot was a LEED Gold building that totals 200,000 square feet and was the start of a key partnership in the United States that has delivered 2.5 million square feet across several projects, including Woodcreek and the Shell Technology Center in Houston.
As a team, we shouldn’t do anything that doesn’t contribute to a business outcome. If we get a request from one of the business units, we make sure it fits with the local and overall strategies. If a business unit wants us to invest in refurbishing a space, for example, we check the business strategy to ensure we plan on staying in that location for x number of years.
We’ve also created “connect workplace” standards, which are a set of design standards we apply to any new investment or refurbishment to make sure that all our real estate investments meet the needs of the business and the activities we need to accomplish. Spaces being delivered to these standards have a look, feel, and brand—but in a flexible way that can be optimized and later repurposed in the marketplace.
We have major projects around the world. We’re finishing up several in Houston and are looking at our HQ in the Netherlands while also going through a big transition in London, where the Shell Centre building that we finished in the 1960s has run its course. We sold off 700,000 square feet of the building in the early 1990s and retained over a million square feet. Since then, we have entered into a joint venture to redevelop the whole site. To do so, we’ve struck a commercial deal with the developer, who will do all the heavy lifting, with Shell as a partner and one of the future occupiers of the site.
Testimonial
“Keith is a leading professional in the industry and a very effective partner. He is very connected to his partnership relationships, is consistent, and is realistic in his expectations, given his depth of understanding of the Asia markets and the industry as a whole.”
Phil Rowland, Executive Managing Director of Global Corporate Services in the Asia Pacific, CBRE
Perhaps most importantly, we’re working on a new Shell Technology Center in India that is one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever been a part of. This—together with Amsterdam and Houston—will be our third technology center for main R&D projects. We wanted it in India because the country is such an important talent pipeline for our company. We decided to buy directly from the government in a business park it was developing. In India, a business must first lease land until the government sees a sincere investment and effort, then you receive permission to acquire the title. After the financial crisis, strict requirements around time lines loosened, and we made the purchase. We fine-tuned the master plan, and the business went through an entire look at the R&D footprint worldwide before finally signing the investment proposal and breaking ground. Today, the main civil infrastructure is well in progress, and we are about to start the engineering infrastructure.
Some of Shell’s R&D activities will move and take place in Bangalore. Technology is an important differentiator for us, and the facility must be designed and fit for business. We need to have the right space to attract the talent we want and need. The facility will have offices to accommodate 1,200 people and could expand to fit 1,800. We’ll build wet labs and large-scale experimentation and research areas in an enclosed environment as well as infrastructure for pilot plants. This will allow researchers and engineers the space to do trials and tests on mini prototypes before building full-scale working models. The project will be fully complete in 2016.
This new center is critical to achieving Shell’s vision. Energy use could double by 2050, and we need the right technologies and the right talent to help our company meet the coming increase in demand. Within real estate, we’re building our strategic supplier network, increasing efficiencies, and investing in standardization. By doing so, we can pick up new projects and move quickly with all the people and ingredients in place to execute flawlessly. We plan to help Shell move forward by doing our piece as professionally and efficiently as possible.
