The View From….
Mark Atkins FCCA, Business Change Manager, Birmingham City Council
It is difficult to describe an average day as the demands of my role are so diverse. I might be preparing business cases for potential projects, developing strategies for the optimal use of the City Council’s retained office portfolio, engaging with senior management in respect of the adoption of agile working, or the management of migration planning activity.
My responsibilities are to ensure the optimal use of the City Council’s retained administrative office property portfolio and to promote, and advise on, agile working.
My current challenges include the impact of austerity on the public sector. I also have to increase the agility of staff working from the City Council’s administrative office estate to create space to accommodate staff from other buildings to achieve further accommodation savings. I enjoy the fresh challenge each day brings and seeing the physical outcome of strategic space and accommodation planning that was undertaken months previously. I then know those plans have made a positive contribution to the operational delivery of the City Council and made significant operational cost savings.
I would like to improve some of the advanced strategic thinking associated with optimising use of the administrative office portfolio. Much of the current planning is reactive. My advice to others starting out is to be flexible and prepared to evolve professionally! I have worked as an internal auditor, a management accountant in property services and social care, a financial accountant working on our published accounts and in the last eight years on business transformation projects. My biggest professional achievement to date was the planning and project management of a multi-property restack programme to create 360 contiguous workstations. This enabled the vacation of a property that was costing the City Council a lot of money. Family life keeps me pretty busy. I am a school governor and treasurer of my eldest son’s football team. I cycle to work most days and play Crown Green Bowls to a high level during the spring and summer.