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Michelle Wein is an in-house legal counsel at Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ and legal lead for the ION-DRI programme.
I am part of the Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ Legal Services team, under the Office of General Counsel. I am one of two Real Estate lawyers and work with Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ Estates, across a range of academic and building projects.Ìý
I joined Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ in February 2019. Part of my role here is to help manage the extensive and historic estate, which includes just under 300 buildings. I have three major projects, for which I am the legal lead – the ION-DRI project, Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ East and Oriel, so am usually juggling numerous balls.
My ION-DRI role is to ensure that all the legal contracts and documents for the construction and occupation of the new building are in place. When I came on board, Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾H were moving out of the Eastman Dental Hospital and I was responsible for co-ordinating and project managing all the different legal paths to get the relevant agreements in place so that we could sign the construction contract and start works.
There are many moving parts and multiple paths to tread before you can get that first spade in the ground, particularly a challenging construction site in the middle of the Bloomsbury - a potential logistical nightmare.Ìý
“Working on the project for the last four years has been fascinating and a very steep learning curve, but ultimately a wonderful legacy.Ìý Real Estate lawyers don't get the opportunity very often to work on translational neuroscience projects which are really going to change the world. And that's been amazing and something I am proud of.
We had to have planning agreements in place with Camden as the local planning authority; plus we're very close to our neighbours, Calthorpe Community Garden and St. Andrew's Garden, so we had to make sure that they were happy too and this involved negotiating complex neighbourly agreements.
I was part of procuring the construction contract for the new building, completing in July 2020 -ÌýÌýright in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as a being involved in relocating mobile phone masts from the top of the development site to Frances Gardner House – not as easy as you might think!
The most interesting challenge so far, without a doubt, has been negotiating the Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾H lease for their occupation of the basement and ground floor premises in the new building.Ìý
I worked very closely with Colin Plank and Martin Treacy in Estates on this, and Robert Bexson at Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾H, for over three years, and we finally exchanged on 23 December 2022 – an early Christmas present!
The negotiation was a challenge, balancing the complex needs of multiple stakeholder groups, compromising and finding a way through that is realistic and meets everyone’s specifications and requirements. We really got into the detail of things like the number of showers and lockers. When we signed the agreement, it felt like I'd climbed a mountain.
There are so many different partners involved in this project. Meeting all these amazing people, from Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾, Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾H, Queen Square Institute of Neurology, UK Dementia Research Institute, Medical Research Council has been one of the best things.Ìý
A big achievement related to ION-DRI has been completing an agreement between Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾H and Â鶹´«Ã½ÊÓƵÍøÕ¾ for Queen Square House. We had to work quickly on this for NHS budgetary reasons and managed to complete on a very complex legal arrangement in just one month - it should have taken about a year. That was a good example of what you can achieve when everyone is pulling in the same direction.Ìý
Working on the project for the last four years has been fascinating and a very steep learning curve, but ultimately a wonderful legacy. Real Estate lawyers don't get the opportunity very often to work on translational neuroscience projects which are really going to change the world. And that's been amazing and something I am very proud of.
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