Lendlease · Property lifecycle
Led end-to-end design of Track & Trace, a core module in Lendlease's Podium platform
As Senior Product Designer at Lendlease, I supervised the end-to-end design of Track & Trace, a core module in Podium, Lendlease's property lifecycle platform.
Situation. Podium is where Lendlease's property managers, site managers, and asset teams coordinate the lifecycle of every property under management: construction milestones, defect tracking, tenant handover, ongoing maintenance. Track & Trace was the module handling day-to-day defect and issue coordination between construction crews and site management. The existing workflow relied on emails, spreadsheets, and phone calls; things got lost, blame moved with the messenger, and audit trails were reconstructed after the fact.
Role. I supervised design end-to-end, working closely with product and engineering leads to shape the module's direction. I led a cross-functional design team of three designers from discovery through launch, setting sprint priorities and running design reviews. Alongside the module work, I organised the foundation and ongoing maintenance of Lendlease's Design System for cross-department use, later adopted by 25+ designers across 4 departments.
Constraints and trade-offs. Podium was mid-flight, with several modules already shipped and others in flight in parallel. Track & Trace had to feel like part of Podium, not a bolt-on. I chose to invest early in the Design System foundation rather than ship faster with bespoke Track & Trace UI. Slower to launch, but the components we built for Track & Trace paid off immediately across the next three modules that adopted them.
Approach. Three pivotal decisions. First, bi-weekly usability sessions with real site and property managers throughout the build, not just at the end. Every release was validated against actual users before shipping. Second, joint design-engineering reviews with the front-end leads on shared component behaviour, catching drift before implementation rather than after. Third, giving the three Digital Graduates I mentored real component and flow ownership instead of mockup-and-handover tasks, so they learned by shipping.
What shipped. Track & Trace, live in Podium, with a defect-tracking flow that replaced the email-and-spreadsheet workflow that preceded it. Alongside it, the Lendlease Design System's early foundation that scaled to 4 departments and 25+ designers.
Impact.
- Track & Trace launched on time as a validated module within Podium
- Lendlease Design System adopted across 4 departments and 25+ designers within the first year
- Two of the three Digital Graduates I mentored transitioned into permanent design roles
- Bi-weekly usability sessions became a template other Podium modules adopted
Reflection. The move from designer-who-designs to designer-who-runs-a-team happened at Lendlease. Managing three designers plus mentoring three graduates while owning end-to-end design of a live module was the year I stopped optimising for my own throughput and started optimising for the team's. Track & Trace shipped, but the Design System and the two graduates who went permanent are the parts of that year I am proudest of.