It is not news that the coronavirus has changed the real estate industry, in some cases irrevocably. The move towards home working has raised some questions over how offices will operate, while our dependence on efficient supply chains has seen the logistics market surpass other sectors in its growth.

As lockdown continues to ease, the UK economy is waking up to a new environment in which to operate. Nowhere is this truer than the UK construction industry. The industry did continue to operate throughout the worst of the pandemic in England, but on a much-restricted basis. It is now adapting to working with social distancing in place and amid an economy facing recession when compared with February this year.

This was the context in which I began my new role at Clearbell in April this year, in the newly founded Project Management team.

Our team oversees all projects in development, whether we are developing land from scratch or repurposing and renovating assets. Our aim is to guarantee high performance and consistency of standards across our portfolio, which was a challenge in the midst of lockdown. 

Having joined in this challenging period, our team had to hit the ground running to adapt our methods of working constantly. Naturally, work has slowed down to a certain degree, however this has varied across the UK and even in early May we were working on up to nine different projects. 

We wanted to share some of our learnings from the experience of working in lockdown in the hope that others may take something from it.

No substitute for boots-on-the-ground