Dr Timothy Eccles

I am a senior lecturer in real estate, joining LSBU from NTU in 2018. I have spent parts of the last five decades within higher education, having begun my career at (then) Kingston Polytechnic in 1989.
I qualified as a chartered quantity surveyor and have worked hard to avoid a silo mentality limiting my interests to building or construction or property. Having a MA in Social and Political Theory (Sussex) and a PhD in Sociology (LSE) have given me further insight into what we have in common as an industry that transcends a very fragmented occupational division of labour.

My research considers a broad range of technical issues, linked by the social process through which they take form. So, for example, I have published in peer reviewed journals concerning the technical aspects of service charge management, considered the merits of self-regulation by the profession within the field, examined change management within the discipline as a case study and developed a framework for analysing the occupational form of the work within a paradigm of formal versus informal procedures. My work was taken up within a RICS code of practice and has been driving change in the discipline for over a decade.
I have published on accounting issues within real estate and discussed the jurisdictional boundaries between surveying and accounting professional interests. My paper on the structure of accounting practices remains one of the most downloaded in the history of the journal Property Management, despite its relatively recent publication date.
Currently, I am working on formality and informality as a means of understanding the nature of professional work and issues of regulation and compliance. The two also offer a co-investigative framework. I have previously published on the theme of 'smart regulation' as a means of balancing the costs of a regulatory framework with the efficacy and speed of a self-regulated workplace. This can be viewed as a balance of the informal, where trust is based, and the formal, where transparency can offset issues of mistrust. These issues hold true in building and real estate, but also, for example, in food hygiene and the police service.
I have co-authored two books. The most recent, Corporate Real Estate Asset Management, published by Routledge in 2017, presents the latest thought and practice on successful and efficient use of corporate office space.
I am on the editorial board of two academic journals: Seminare - Scientific Investigations and Uniwersyteckie Czasopismo Socjologiczne.
I have also written chapters in edited books, monographs, in peer reviewed journals and for technical publications. My total number of published outputs exceeds 300.

Management of buildings and building processes, with a specialism in Corporate Real Estate Asset Management. Economics of construction and real estate.