Asset Strategy and Workplace
Supporting the public sector to improve the strategic planning, management and use of their assets
Future decision making on public sector assets should be based upon needs based Asset Strategies that embed Scottish Government’s ‘investment hierarchy’. These will support improved visibility of long term infrastructure needs and prioritisation of investment.
Our Asset Strategy and Workplace team work across the public sector to support the development of Asset Strategies and property related business cases. We promote a place-based approach to collaboration and co-location as key drivers that can improve service delivery and local community resilience, and ensure a better use of public assets.
Our New Frontiers for Smarter Working programme provides guidance and support to public bodies across Scotland to understand, develop, and embed their own future workplace models.
Our work is primarily focused on the following activities:
We are taking forward a programme of work on behalf of Scottish Government to support the development of a more consistent and standard approach to Asset Strategies. This is focused on social infrastructure assets, and includes support to Scottish Funding Council on the College Infrastructure Investment Plan.
We provide support to Scottish Government on its Single Scottish Estate programme which seeks to deliver a more efficient and effective public sector office estate. We also work closely with Scottish Government on its core estate strategy and asset planning.
We support public organisations develop collaborative approaches to asset sharing projects, including strategic briefs and business cases, that help demonstrate the full range of benefits that can be achieved.
We work closely with other SFT workstreams to support public organisations develop asset and infrastructure strategies that respond to net zero and climate change commitments. This helps embed decarbonisation, energy efficiency and climate resilience into long term asset planning, and ensuring that investment plans are aligned with wider sustainability objectives and statutory climate targets.
We also provide strategic support and advice to Scotland’s three emergency services. This includers the tri-partite Emergency Services Co-location Programme which has helped boost the number of locations where at least two of the three services are co-located from 15 to nearly 50 over the last five years.
The New Frontiers for Smarter Working programme continues to provide guidance and support to public bodies across Scotland to understand, develop, and embed their own future workplace models. For work and workplace, the potential for change over the last few years has been significant, and we continue to help organisations understand their ambitions.
We do this through the delivery of cross-sector learning forums, and useful resources stored on a shared knowledge hub, and are directly supporting organisations on their smarter working journeys.
Our New Frontiers for Smarter annual reports provide insights into how work and workplace is evolving for the public sector in Scotland.
Our team
Gordon Alexander
Senior Associate Director
Gordon is a Chartered Surveyor with over 20 years' experience providing strategic property advice to the private and public sectors. He joined SFT’s Asset Strategy and Workplace team in 2013.
Contact Gordon
Shona Adam
Associate Director
Shona is a workplace change specialist with over 30 years' experience in workplace design.
Her focus is very much on the cultural change aspects associated with smarter working and how people connect with their physical space to create efficient and effective workplace solutions. Shona has an honours degree in Interior Design plus supporting qualifications in holistic design and various alternative therapies.
Contact Shona
John Hughes
Associate Director
John joined SFT in October 2025 as an Associate Director in the Asset Strategy and Workplace team. John is a registered architect and brings over a decade of experience in private practice working as an architect and project manager, where he specialised in strategic delivery to enable effective solutions. He has led projects across Scotland and the wider UK, supporting public and private sector organisations to deliver major capital programmes and develop long-term asset and Net Zero strategies.
Contact John
Ruth MacDonald
Associate Director
Ruth is a chartered surveyor with over 30 years’ experience in the public sector, including local authority and higher education. Prior to joining SFT Ruth worked in a variety of roles including regeneration, development management and strategic asset management.
Contact Ruth
Iain Wardrop
Associate Director
Iain is a Chartered Surveyor with 30 years' experience in both private practice and the public sector providing strategic advice on land and property portfolios and regeneration projects.
He is now involved in property and business change programmes that support public authorities with the asset management of their physical estate.
Contact Iain
