Survey, meter, dock, lease: four kinds of record

Mandate

Make lease, metering and access records dependable enough for lenders, valuers, occupiers' assurance providers and the people whose entries we record.

Outcomes

• Reconciled 312 lease abstracts before a ₹1,980 crore refinancing, reducing the draft rent roll by ₹9.4 crore
• Raised measured energy and water coverage from 59 to 96 per cent of leased area
• Deleted 3.8 million historical visitor records and set 90-day routine retention
• Introduced three reported measures of occupancy for leasing, finance, the valuers and the board

Decisions in context

The role was created when the board recognised that our lease, meter and gate records were relied on by people outside the company: lenders, valuers, listed occupiers and, under the new data protection law, the individuals recorded at our gates. I lead five teams covering lease and valuation data, metering and sustainability data, data engineering, access and privacy, and analytics. All three cases on this site belong to this period; each required me to tell a senior colleague that a figure was not yet supportable. My current work is preparing our definitions for the board's evaluation of a possible listing of two stabilised office parks through a REIT, which would expose them to a much wider readership. I present to the audit committee twice a year and report quarterly to the risk and sustainability committee. I hold no directorship at Sahyavati or elsewhere.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first independent directorship that is compatible with it.

Mandate

Build one lease record shared by finance, leasing and asset management, and prepare the data behind half-yearly valuations.

Outcomes

• Built the lease data warehouse now used by finance, leasing and asset management
• Recorded 2020 deferrals and waivers as separate concession types across 214 occupiers
• Prepared the lease and occupancy data packs for the pension investor's 2021 due diligence

Decisions in context

This was the period in which lease data stopped being a finance spreadsheet and became a shared record. I reported to the chief financial officer and led a team of nineteen. The lease data warehouse we built joined abstracts, billing and the valuation rent roll, and gave leasing and asset management the same view as finance. The 2020 lockdowns arrived halfway through. Occupiers sought relief in many forms, and the easy course was to record all of it as reduced rent. We kept deferrals, waivers and lease amendments apart, because each meant something different to cash, to the accounts and to the next valuation. That discipline paid off in 2021, when the pension investor's advisers tested our data before taking their stake. They asked fewer questions about concessions than about anything else. I did not negotiate any concession myself; leasing and finance made those decisions.

Reason for the move

Asked by the managing director to take the newly created chief data officer role.

Mandate

Turn scanned leases into structured records that budgeting and billing could rely on.

Outcomes

• Abstracted 280 scanned leases into structured records with clause references
• Identified chargeable-area and escalation differences between signed leases and billing
• Built the first lease-expiry and escalation schedule used in the annual budget

Decisions in context

I joined a company whose leases were well negotiated and poorly recorded. Signed documents sat in scanned folders, and billing ran from fields that someone had typed in years earlier. My six analysts abstracted 280 leases with a clause reference for every field, and we agreed with legal counsel how ambiguous clauses would be read until a dispute required otherwise. The work exposed differences between leases and billing, mostly in escalation dates and in chargeable area after renewals. I reported those differences to the head of financial planning rather than correcting the billing system myself, because each correction could change an occupier's invoice. We also produced the company's first lease-expiry schedule, which became the basis of the annual budget. When the Chakan warehousing park opened in 2017, its leases were structured from the first signature and needed no reconciliation.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead portfolio data across office and warehousing parks.

Mandate

Give the operations director and customers one consistent account of gate, dock and inventory activity.

Outcomes

• Standardised gate-in and dock timestamps across seven warehouses
• Reconciled customer and operator inventory counts monthly, with documented differences
• Introduced dock-utilisation reporting used in planning two warehouse expansions

Decisions in context

Contract warehousing showed me how two honest records can disagree. Our warehouse system and each customer's own system logged the same trucks and pallets, but from different gates and with different cut-off times. Monthly reconciliations had turned into arguments about whose number was right. With my four analysts I wrote down, warehouse by warehouse, where each clock started and when each count closed, and we agreed those definitions with the customers' logistics managers. The differences that remained were real ones, and the operations director could act on them. I also built dock-utilisation reporting, which informed two expansions at Chakan. My authority was analytical; operations decided staffing, layout and customer terms. The work taught me the yard and dock questions I now ask our own warehousing occupiers, from the other side of the landlord's boundary.

Reason for the move

Joined a park owner to work on the data behind long leases rather than short service contracts.

Mandate

Produce occupier recovery statements that matched what each meter actually measured.

Outcomes

• Rebuilt the meter register for 38 buildings, recording what each meter served
• Reduced recovery disputes by about a third over two years
• Separated grid, generator and chilled-water costs in occupier statements

Decisions in context

This role put me inside the plant rooms. Recovery statements for electricity, generator diesel and water were built from readings taken by hand and typed into spreadsheets, and many occupier complaints were justified. A meter labelled for one floor often fed a shared chiller or a common corridor as well. I walked the buildings with the site engineers, traced what each meter served and rebuilt the register for 38 buildings. From 2008 I led three assistants who maintained it. Statements began to show grid, generator and chilled-water costs separately, with the meter behind each line. Disputes fell by about a third over two years. The engineers decided where meters were installed and how they were maintained; my part was making the data honest about what they measured. That distinction between a reading and an allocation still anchors our metering programme.

Reason for the move

Moved into warehousing to work with operational data in a different asset class.

Mandate

Collect and verify office supply and vacancy evidence for the firm's quarterly survey.

Outcomes

• Surveyed about 260 office buildings each quarter in assigned micro-markets
• Drafted the published definitions of available, let and occupied space
• Reconciled letting agents' figures with site evidence before publication

Decisions in context

My first employer sold a number, and I learnt how much work sat behind it. Each quarter I visited about 260 office buildings in my micro-markets, spoke with letting agents and security staff and recorded the status of every floor. Agents had reasons to describe space generously, and building registers were often out of date, so we needed rules for deciding which evidence prevailed. My head of research, Meghna Raverkar, asked me to draft the published definitions of available, let and occupied space, and to apply them consistently even when a client preferred another reading. I had no authority over what the firm published; I prepared evidence for her review. The work gave me a lasting suspicion of any occupancy figure that arrives without its definition. I left to work with measured data, where an instrument rather than an agent set the reading.

Reason for the move

Moved to facility services to work with measured operational data rather than survey estimates.