Thirty years in one building type.

Why the sector focus

A development company is really a decision-making company. It decides what gets built, on what terms, in what order, and who carries which risk. The quality of those decisions depends almost entirely on how many times you have seen the same problem before.

Leisure and hospitality buildings generate a particular set of problems, and they recur. Plant space is always tighter than the concept drawings assume. Extract and acoustics are always the two things that constrain the section. The operator's brand standards always arrive after the structural grid is fixed. Licensing and environmental health always have a view, and it is always cheaper to hear it early.

By staying with one building type since 1995 we have accumulated the version of that knowledge that only comes from seeing buildings in use — not from a specification, and not from a sector report.

How we are set up

We are deliberately a small company. Development management does not need a large permanent staff; it needs continuity in the people making decisions, and the ability to assemble the right professional team for each scheme.

So the consultants — architect, structural engineer, services engineer, cost consultant, planning consultant — are appointed to suit the job in front of us rather than to keep an office occupied. What stays constant is the development management, and it stays with the same person from feasibility through to the end of the defects period.

The practical effect is that nobody has to be brought up to speed halfway through. In a building type where the early decisions govern the late ones, that continuity is worth more than headcount.

Who we work with

Landowners with a site that may or may not suit a leisure use. Operators who have found a building and need the development side handled. Investors bringing forward a leisure or hospitality asset who want an appraisal they can rely on rather than one built to justify a decision already taken.

Where we work

Our office is in Bow, east London, and we work across London and the South East. We will look at schemes further afield where the building type is genuinely in our line and the programme allows us to be on site as often as the job needs.