The weeks leading up to the Government’s March 23 lockdown felt strange, with the postponing of various industry events rapidly turning into a full-scale lock-down and with a scale of business challenge none of us have ever experienced.

So a month later at British Land we are up and running and learning to be agile, adapting fast to the changing faces of this crisis.

It sounds simple but prioritising has been key to our response. As was devolving more responsibility down into the operational management to really speed up decision making, all within a really clear framework set from the top. This has given senior management time to think ahead, allowing us to address the urgent and longer term planning – so also setting plans in place for the end of lock down, what the “new normal” might mean for us and just talk to more people outside our own organisation.

Our focus first and foremost was people and financial resilience. This meant looking after the welfare of our own people, our customers and the communities around our places, keeping our places safe and secure and bolstering our already strong financial position to ensure the business remains resilient.

Fielding A teams and B teams on alternate weeks survived only for a few days before most of our office-based colleagues were working from home. Having worked hard to move to cloud-based office systems over recent years and work much more flexibly, this worked remarkably smoothly and within hours we were seamlessly meeting over teams and accessing all our systems.

Like many others all of this is helping us stay connected not just through meetings but also regular social activities, fitness classes and highly competitive quizzes. That’s revealing lots of hidden talents around the business!

And we’re staying connected to the wider community around our places too, moving to virtual volunteering for example and rapidly redirecting resources from our Community Investment Fund to organisations and charities most in need in the midst of Covid-19.

Throughout, our property management colleagues have worked hard to make sure our properties are safe and secure and remained operational to support the businesses continuing to operate from offices and essential retailers who remain open as well. They are now in the forefront of planning a staggered re-opening of all our places, certainly a daunting task with every aspect of our property management needing to be re-thought.

We’re closely watching what’s happening in countries opening up including China, where in the major cities over 80% of people are reported to be back at work in some form and shops and restaurants are open, albeit with much lower footfall.

Clearly safety will be at the top of people’s minds – so social distancing and bio-security measures are key. We anticipate limits to the amount of people who can congregate in spaces including lifts and conference rooms. In addition to enhanced cleaning regimes, there will be an increased interest in air quality and the “health” of spaces with evidence emerging of factors like humidity, temperature and pollution being key factors in viral spread.

We do need to be clear though what will endure. To a time when vaccines and effective treatments have been developed and social distancing and more intense bio-security measures are relaxed.

In many ways, what we see is an acceleration of trends already underway – trends we have been re-shaping our business to respond to.

In offices, our focus on mixed use campuses is all about providing organisations with the best places for their staff – responding to their desire for healthier, more flexible, sustainable and well-connected places which help them attract and retain talent.

Wellness, which has always been an important feature of our Broadgate, Paddington Central and Regent’s Place mixed use campuses, will become even more important to our customers.

As employees become more discerning about where they work, at British Land we believe we are well placed with our world class office buildings in core locations, our “core-plus flex” model and our flexible workspace brand Storey. One thing is for sure – people will want freedom and agility to choose.

There is no doubt that retail will also look very different. Trends which we saw before the crisis, such as a greater focus on omni-channel, will only become more apparent. The shake-out we envisaged taking place over a number of years will happen much, much faster.

However, we believe that the fundamental need for physical retail space will endure, albeit as part of a richer mixed-use environment. It would be no surprise, for example, to see more healthcare related uses in town centres in the coming years.

Finally, we have been great exponents of digitalising real estate and we think this too will be given added impetus by the crisis, although some of the emphasis will change. Less about efficiency and more about engagement and measuring building health.

That means occupier engagement platforms because people will want more information about the places where they work, sensors to measure occupational density and air quality and contactless access.

It’s no exaggeration to say that in real estate changes that might have happened in 10 years could now be commonplace by this time next year.