What qualities are needed to manage a science or business park?

The MAPP Science and Business Parks team have been helping landlords run and manage lab and science space as well as advising those that wish to invest in this sector for well over a decade.

We are also proud to be, one of the few managing agents that are, members of the UK Science Park Association (UKSPA).

The management of a science park is undoubtedly more intensive and more specialist than operating the majority of other property classes. Our interactions with occupiers are more involved and the relationship between landlord and occupier is more symbiotic.

The areas outlined below are all essential in successfully managing a Science or Business Park:

Lab Specialism

Dr Kevin Thurlow-Criss is one of our MAPP Science and Business Park Team specialists. Kevin has over 30 years experience in biomedical research, laboratory operations and management – combined with extensive health, safety and compliance knowledge. With this wealth of practical experience, he understands our occupiers business and lab space requirements and will work closely with them to realise their ambitions. Kevin’s experience ensures our procedures around compliance requirements are fully robust and understood, and is of direct benefit to our clients and occupiers.

Data

The frequent changes and need for occupiers to grow or shrink in space is a key feature of many parks where an element of “flex” is desired by the occupiers. Innovation centres are typical of this, where occupiers often use licence agreements to aid the “easy in /easy out “ nature of the occupation. This in turn leads to a need to manage and control the data in a more enhanced and focused way to traditional management. For this reason, the MAPP Science and Business Parks team have a dedicated data control and reporting team to ensure we always give the data the importance it deserves.

In addition to ensuring records remain 100% up to date, the range of information we collect is also growing. This helps us to provide better and smarter management information to our clients.

Service Agreements and Service charge

The services are often more complex and more specific to occupational needs. As such, we have created a services team who are able to work with the parks to ensure that any services provided are split in the most equitable way across those occupiers who require them. This allows us to offer multiple service levels to different occupiers across the same park.

We believe this move away from the traditional model has allowed us to work better and smarter and to deliver an enhanced service.

Please get in touch with a member of the MAPP Science and Business Park team, if you would like to hear more or have any questions.