The answer for a lot of landlords is probably a mixture of pressure and persuasion, with the emphasis being on the former rather than the latter. But making this happen means there has to be a guiding hand, nudging things along, cajoling and enticing. For Australian developer Lend Lease's operations in the UK, the man who does this is Duncan Howes.

"Croydon born and bred", well West Wickham anyway, Howes' background is not the classical route into the arcane area of shopping centre design, branding and tenant liaison; "I'm an architect by trade: I qualified in '95," he says, "I was 25 when I qualified," he adds.

Gaining his first degree from Oxford Polytechnic and his diploma from Kingston University, by the time he made the cut he had already been gaining experience as an architect with on-the-job training with a small Tower Bridge-based architectural practice called Sampson Associates. Howes says that he was fortunate as in the mid-1990s the UK construction industry was at an historic low: "It was all about pen and ink on the drawing board then, pre-CAD."

Post qualification, Howes stayed with the architect's firm for a further three years and then moved through a variety of corporate architecture jobs, including a spell working for Starbucks: "I sold my soul," he says, "and worked as store designer and then as project manager. I worked there for four years and learnt what it was like to be a client rather than a consultant."

The Starbucks role involved adapting the various American formats for the UK market. Looked at objectively, a sceptic might be inclined to remark that there is in fact very little difference between the Starbucks one encounters in the land of its foundation and the rash of branches that has spread across the UK almost without anyone noticing. But difference there is, according to Howes and the fact that the changes are largely imperceptible is, as he puts it, "in some ways a compliment and in some ways not. That's the important thing about design: as a customer you don't necessarily have to pick up on the detail, you just have to appreciate an environment for what it is."

The work with the purveyor of skinny lattes had two effects for Howes: "It taught me about working for a big corporate and was intriguing because it taught me about store design." He also learnt about life on the road. Starbucks was expanding aggressively, "we were doing a hundred projects a year" and much of the work meant visiting the sites he was working on.

It also, indirectly, gave Howes his first contact with his current employer - Lend Lease. "I did the Starbucks at Touchwood, Solihull. I didn't know it at the time, but I was working on Lend Lease property," he says. He feels that the Starbucks experience has stood him in good stead: "A lot of my thinking now, a lot of the rationale, is knowing what it was like to work with landlords. As a retailer I was going into these developments and sometimes it was successful, sometimes it wasn't. Landlords have different ways of interacting with their tenants. So I learned a lot."

All of which brought him to the point 18 months ago where he joined Lend Lease as its portfolio retail delivery manager. He may be based at Bluewater, but the job remit extends across all the various schemes that the developer has in place from Tayside to Kent. As a job title, it is a mouthful and trying to understand exactly what it is that Howes now has responsibility for takes a little concentration.

At its most straightforward, the Lend Lease role demands of Howes that from the moment a tenant signs on the dotted line and agrees to take a unit in one of the developer's schemes, he is there to help that retailer open the store. This may seem beguilingly simple, but as Howes notes, there are those retailers that arrive with highly developed plans in place and then work to deliver a new store and there are those whose hand may need to be held pretty much all of the way through the process. Both types of retailer require attention, understanding and a high degree of expertise and it is Howes' judgement that must determine what is required as the situation demands.

The retail delivery role is one that has been in existence since Lend Lease first set foot in the UK, before the turn of the millennium. Howes points out that prior to the opening of Bluewater there were 15 retail delivery managers working on the Kent project - such was the scale of the scheme. "Fifteen guys talking to retailers," says Howes. He continues: "They were responsible for getting these 330 retailers open on the same date. That discipline of retail delivery has come from Australia and it's part of the core service that Lend Lease provides."

Asked why he chose to apply for the job at Lend Lease, Howes is uncertain: "As with all things I do, I don't tend to conform to corporate guidelines. I just say things the way I see them. I grew up in Croydon and was dragged kicking and screaming around shopping centres and I know what they are. Everybody has the experience of a shopping centre: everyone goes shopping and I just recalled things that I remembered about Bluewater."

Howes' job is not focused upon Bluewater however. "Lend Lease needed somebody who could handle all of the retail material, all of its assets. Clearly Bluewater has a bigger implication than the other locations, but there is a huge amount of activity going on in the other assets.

There is. Lend Lease went public last month about its scheme to remodel much of Stockport. And on the day prior to meeting Howes, he had spent a fair amount of his time on a train travelling to Warrington and back to assess progress on the Golden Square extension and makeover, due for completion in 2007. Couple this with frequent visits to the Lend Lease schemes in Dundee and Touchwood and it becomes clear that Howes' life on the road, which frequently includes the 09.00 shuttle from London's City Airport to Dundee, is far from over.

The Lend Lease UK development pipeline is likely to see the pace quicken. "There's going to be a lot more activity in the future," says Howes. Events appear to have been kind to him: "For me it was perfect timing because the way things have turned out there's going to be a lot more requirement for retail delivery. The last 18 months have been about what it's like to concentrate purely on existing assets. There is a constant turnover of retailers in our assets. I've always tried to see our centres as the man in the street, as the man in the mall would. My job has been either to deal with new tenants or refurbishments and to interact with their retail teams, their consultants, their designers."

There is also something of the showman about what Howes does: "Part of what I do is to convey the possibilities, the potential, of working in our assets. We're not dictatorial or prescriptive about this. Some landlords have a different way of interacting with tenants." He acknowledges that delivery is one thing, but retail delivery does not mean that Lend Lease knows better about what to do with an individual unit than the retailer that is going to occupy it. "We deal with the best retail designers in Europe. Who am I to tell them how to do their job? We harness their enthusiasm and try to make sure that their enthusiasm works with our enthusiasm. Our assets are all of these great retailers standing side by side. We have to ask 'how does that retailer stand out from the crowd?'"

A reasonable question, and judging by the glittering array of retail names that lie just outside the doors of the stylish Lend Lease offices at Bluewater, the great majority seem to be managing this - with the help of Duncan Howes.

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