Transforming global corporate real estate strategy: Koch partners with JLL

As a large, complex private corporation, Koch oversees a diverse set of global companies, subsidiaries and affiliates. When seeking to enhance real estate services across these diverse entities and generate global value, Koch selected JLL as its preferred partner.

Koch companies operate across a variety of industries, including chemicals, energy, fiber and polymers, minerals, fertilizer, pulp and paper industries, as well as technology, software and investing.

About 130,000 employees across more than 50 countries occupy 140 million square feet of space in diverse Koch facilities around the world, including administrative offices, labs, warehouse, manufacturing and mixed-use properties.

Koch recognized that its internal corporate real estate team, while strong and capable, could create more value by partnering with a firm that brought complementary expertise. Koch sought a partner that could deliver specialized real estate capabilities at scale while aligning with the company's culture and values.

JLL's global footprint, real estate expertise, and collaborative approach made them the right fit. Together, they created LIFT (Land, Infrastructure, Facilities and Transactions), an organization that aligns with Koch's operating principles and provides flexible real estate services adapted to the distinct needs of Koch's diversified businesses.

The global real estate outsourcing partnership with JLL was the first of its kind for Koch. Initially, the relationship was based on a standard global service delivery model of corporate real estate services, including full-time integrated facility management (IFM). 

In an era where corporate real estate must deliver measurable business impact, Koch and JLL knew they needed to evolve their relationship and create a new model that fundamentally reimagines how multinational organizations approach real estate strategy. 

Rather than functioning as an external vendor, the LIFT team operates as a leveraged capability within the organizational structure at Koch. Koch companies can rely on LIFT for nearly any real estate service needed: from occupancy planning, workplace strategy and relocation management to portfolio optimization, transaction management, project management, lease administration and more.

This integration allows LIFT to serve as both subject matter expert and internal connector – bridging gaps between corporate HR, local operations, finance teams and executive leadership across the diverse portfolio of businesses at Koch.

Within LIFT, the Integrated Solutions Management (ISM) team provides a single point of accountability. ISM creates innovative approaches to common workplace challenges, adapts them to the stakeholders’ requirements and drives collaboration within organizations to bridge gaps and help meet business objectives.

The model's effectiveness stems from its adaptive approach. Koch has a decentralized structure that grants individual facilities significant decision-making authority, which means LIFT must earn trust and demonstrate value at each location rather than relying on corporate mandates. 

Success requires balancing the priorities of operations managers focused on production efficiency, finance leaders evaluating capital allocation, and frontline employees experiencing the workplace daily. By adapting real estate expertise to Koch's unique culture and avoiding template solutions in favor of tailored problem-solving, LIFT has positioned itself as a strategic partner rather than a service provider.

"What makes this partnership work is the willingness to meet Koch businesses where they are," notes Jessica Boutros, Director, Programs, JLL. "LIFT doesn't come in with a one-size-fits-all solution. They take time to understand a company or facility’s operations, culture and specific challenges before recommending anything."

LIFT creates value by connecting real estate decisions to business outcomes leadership cares about—profitable growth, talent retention, operational performance, and capital efficiency. When business units face space, location, or workplace questions, LIFT brings knowledge of market dynamics, utilization patterns, capital trade-offs, and risk exposure. This isn't about translating business priorities into real estate terms—it's about ensuring workplace experience evolves as fast as the business does.

One of the most telling tests of the LIFT model came not from a corporate headquarters or a showcase office — but from a manufacturing site.

The Koch facility faced a workforce challenge. Operating in a remote, highly constrained labor market, the team found that the ongoing demands of recruitment were putting increasing pressure on the employee experience.

What the LIFT team brought was a fresh vantage point. At a facility as large and operationally complex as this, it's easy for facilities conditions to become background noise — something everyone is aware of in the abstract but that no single team owns end-to-end. LIFT's role was to make the invisible visible: to connect what frontline workers were experiencing daily with the funding decisions being made at the leadership level. 

Over three site visits, the team walked every area of the facility alongside both executives and frontline workers. The outcome was a set of quarterly briefings pairing photographic evidence with employee sentiment data — giving leadership a clear, consolidated view of conditions across the site and a direct line between facilities investment and retention outcomes. Alongside that, LIFT partnered with a new Employee Experience Leader role – filled by a trusted 25-year company veteran – and replaced fragmented, building-by-building maintenance with centralized facility management.

The work unfolded in three stages. First, immediate visible changes such as upgraded vending and quick repairs that told employees something had shifted. Second, a roughly $2 million capital investment to modernize 33 restrooms and breakrooms. Third, a longer-term master plan with shelf-ready projects: multilingual wayfinding systems for a diverse workforce, lighting upgrades and major infrastructure improvements – giving leadership a clear picture of what continued investment would deliver.

Implemented starting in Q3 2025, average turnover fell dramatically. The impact extended beyond retention: average staffing-related downtime also decreased, directly improving operational efficiency.

Leadership now has the tools and visibility to treat physical workspace quality as a direct input to talent retention – connecting investment decisions to outcomes in ways that weren’t previously trackable. Centralized maintenance tracking, a dedicated facility manager and a monthly employee newsletter rounded out an infrastructure built for sustained improvement, not a single intervention.

The learnings from this site are clear: in large, complex facilities, the gap between what employees experience and what leadership can act on is often a systems problem, not a priorities problem. Closing that gap — quickly and credibly — is where LIFT delivers its clearest value. 

As LIFT evolves across the Koch portfolio, the model demonstrates how corporate real estate strategy succeeds when it integrates deeply with organizational culture. Recent success has established precedents for how facility improvements connect to business outcomes, replicable assessment methodologies and solving problems traditionally assigned to HR or operations.

By embedding external capabilities within internal decision-making structures, respecting decentralized authority while providing centralized expertise, and measuring success through business outcomes rather than project completion, JLL and the Koch LIFT model transforms real estate from a support function into a strategic driver of organizational performance.

For other multinational organizations navigating similar challenges – aging infrastructure, competitive talent markets and the need to demonstrate ROI on every capital dollar – LIFT offers a blueprint for what's possible when real estate strategy and business strategy become truly integrated.

Learn more about JLL’s Manufacturing services.