15

Member Team

The Challenge

When an organisation enters Chapter 11 restructuring, every day that facilities remain operational represents continued cost. For WeWork, with approximately 1,800 locations across the United States and internationally, the path to successful restructuring required exiting facilities as efficiently as possible—while ensuring that IT infrastructure containing customer data was handled with full compliance rigour.

The challenge extended beyond scale. Each location’s access control systems, Wi-Fi infrastructure, and reservation platforms contained subscriber information subject to PCI-DSS and Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. The receivership team operated with reduced staff, limited coordination capacity, and a court approval process that moved slower than operational needs demanded. Site contacts—employees facing uncertain futures—were understandably difficult to reach and coordinate with.

We understood what was at stake: the client needed to stop lease payments as quickly as possible, but not at the cost of compliance exposure or data security incidents that would compound an already difficult situation.

Our Approach

We began by reconciling two competing priorities. The receivership team’s natural instinct was to prioritise exits by lease cost—largest payments first. We worked with them to demonstrate that geographic routing would reduce overall project costs while achieving the same outcomes. Rather than crews hopping coast-to-coast chasing the most expensive leases, we organised regional sweeps: Miami to Orlando to Tampa to Washington DC, then up the eastern seaboard.

This required ongoing coordination as priorities shifted throughout the 18-month engagement. We maintained dedicated scheduling teams who worked weeks in advance, building contingency into every route. When site contacts proved unresponsive—a common challenge given the circumstances—we had escalation paths through the receivership team and backup routing plans that minimised cost impact.

Payment structure required equal creativity. Court approval for vendor payments created delays incompatible with our operational tempo. We implemented a value-offset model: equipment recovered from each site was valued and credited against services rendered, with periodic reconciliation throughout the project. This allowed work to continue without waiting for court authorisation of each payment cycle.

Our teams combined employees with market-specific contractors, allowing us to scale presence across diverse geographies while maintaining consistent execution standards. Every asset followed the same chain of custody documentation, the same data destruction protocols, and the same compliance verification—regardless of which team member performed the work.

Technologies & Standards:

• NIST SP 800-88 Rev 1 compliant data sanitisation
• R2 certified responsible recycling
• PCI-DSS compliance for payment card data
• Sarbanes-Oxley compliance for publicly-traded entity
• Asset transfer authorisation documentation
• Chain of custody tracking and certification
• Certificate of data destruction for all storage media
• Certificate of responsible recycling for end-of-life assets

Outcomes