Damian Mears

Seasoned real estate professional with over 20 years of experience spanning facilities management, project management, workplace strategy and masterplanning. Proven track record in both client-side and consultancy roles, serving diverse corporate, government, and non-profit organisations globally. UK-based with 9 years of experience in the Asia Pacific region, delivering exceptional workplace experiences worldwide.

Former director at DEGW, AECOM, and JLL, specialising in leading multi-disciplinary teams, managing financial planning, budgeting and P&L, enhancing team performance and client relations. Key highlights include guiding global workplace transformation programmes, developing toolkits, design guidelines, and FM training courses, managing coworking operations and employee wellbeing initiatives. Advocate for creating magnetising workplaces that attract employees underpinned with user-friendly tech.

Leverages 10 years of hospitality experience to implement customer-centric service. Utilises experience design and journey mapping to ensure a people-first approach to workplace transformation, integrating inclusivity and diversity, sustainability, and wellbeing principles. Committed to elevating workplace standards and delivering innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of modern organisations and their workforce.

Regional Director Workplace UK & Ireland at Arm Ltd. (2024-11 – 2025-07)

Regionally responsible for the operations and compliance of 5 workplaces across UK & Ireland. Providing leadership and working closely with the Site Managers and the teams under them, across the region to provide 4,000+ employees the best workplace experience. Conducting regular 1-1s and quarterly impact reviews to maintain high levels of service.

Introduced procurement and SLA efficiencies within contract management in order to hold to account and deliver highest performance, resilience and downtimes. Reviewing reactive ticket raising and resolution data periodically to review services to improve proactive responses. Sponsoring and overseeing delivery of site improvement projects, relocations and new building designs.

Creating a workplace identity guide to ensure workplace experience is in line with brand expression. Working with security, H&S, compliance and incident teams to ensure all health and safety, security and incident management processes are modelled and improved. Collaborating with People and IT to ensure we are collectively delivering a joined-up, consistent and world-beating service to ensure attracting and retaining best talent.

Working closely with Finance business partners and VP for workplace to ensure costs are managed and budgets justified. Sponsor and overseer of circa 100,000 sq ft of major fit out projects, including large HQ office and lab expansion, where I introduced new project management processes to incorporate strategic brief gathering, such as utilisation studies, co-creation workshops and journey mapping to ensure alignment with business needs and tailored to ensure productivity of each team. Delivering new offices that improve employee experience, collaboration, wellbeing, productivity aligned with cutting-edge inclusive design and on budget and on time.

Ensuring project budgets are managed effectively and value engineered to ensure cost effectiveness and alignment with BREEAM scoring. Working with landlords and developers to instigate campus masterplan to connect and encourage dwell time. Also managing the relationship and escalating issues with landlords and asset management teams to ensure buildings are effectively supported in line with business needs.

Responsible for communication to employees via Slack announcements and leading townhall, all-hands Q&A session to keep employees updated on project progress and manage change. Overseeing the search for new locations, working closely with real estate brokers and TDD teams to ensure suitable buildings are searched and selected. Review and act on employee experience surveys to ensure workplace engagement is high and responsive to the needs of employees.

• Oversaw workplace operations and site managers for 5 offices across the UK & Ireland, including global HQ campus, enhancing the experience for circa 4,000 employees.
• Introduced procurement efficiencies and improved SLA management. Responsible for liaising with contract managers and internal procurement teams to ensure all supplier tenders and agreements meet the needs of the business.
• Oversaw major fit-out projects, to support rapid headcount expansion and improved workplace design, ensuring timely delivery and alignment with business needs, enhancing employee collaboration, wellbeing and inclusivity.
• Part of a global senior leadership team that managed the creation of Workplace design identity guidelines, global Real Estate provider MSAs (transactions, project management services & consulting) and other global initiatives to improve relations with the business and portfolio management.
• Worked closely with internal IT, Procurement, People, Communications, Marketing and business leaders to ensure maintain positive relationships to benefit overall delivery of great workplace experience.
• Identified areas of improvements to campus expansion, liaising with local government, developers and landlords to support future improvement and expansion plans.
• Planning and executing on M&A projects to ensure smooth transition.
• Part of risk, compliance and incident management leaders creating processes to ensure sufficient responses to ISO audits, emergencies and security issues.

Director at Third Link Consulting (2016-10 – 2024-11)

Responsible for leading a team of partner consultants in delivering workplace strategy and change management projects throughout UK and EMEA. Also responsible for lead generation, account management and client relations. For Amazon (EMEA region), the project was for over 3 years, spearheaded the core real estate team that included training and mentoring of portfolio planning, occupancy planning, facilities management and project management teams for EMEA-wide office transformation.

Responsible for building and implementing a workplace transformation programme that enabled a culturally aligned workplace and flexible real estate solution to meet rapid increased headcount, attraction and retention, wellbeing and productivity demands. Successfully managed strategy and change management processes across multiple sites and regions, involving stakeholder engagement, communication planning, user research, data analysis, scenario modelling and location planning; overseeing implementation of 10+ end-to-end projects across the region. Produced new building selection guidelines, FM global SLA's, design, project management and change management toolkits, based upon wellbeing and human-centred experience design.

For JLL (UK), delivered Workplace Experience Strategy and Change Management Planning for JLL's UK consolidation of 3 London offices into single EMEA HQ for 2,500 employees, circa 130k sq ft. for their "Office of the Future" aspirations. Leadership stakeholder engagement and buy-in for future of workplace strategy to magnetise employees and clients to a showcase office of the future that must meet highest accreditation for sustainability, wellbeing, DEI and neurodiversity.

• Delivered over 350k sq ft of workplace strategy and change management projects for Amazon, JLL, Bank of England, Aveva, Caring Together and ICR.
• Ran the studio for experience masterplanning consultancy, FreeState, including business development, financial reporting and client relations.
• Provided digital workplace consultancy to support the development of a workplace experience app.

Global Client Lead at JLL (2015-06 – 2016-10)

Relocated back to the UK to lead HSBC's global workplace transformation programme, working closely with design teams, portfolio planning, project management and facilities management to adapt to new approach to workplace. Improved the implementation of HSBC's global workplace strategy toolkit, including ada

AI training, Self-Managed Teams, Diversity in the Workplace, UX Design in the Workspace