Read about the winner and shortlisted entries of this year’s award for Construction/Consultant Surveyor of the Year (fewer than 100 staff)
Winner: Plan A Consultants
Plan A Consultants’ current worldwide projects include masterplanning, culture, leisure, sports, transport and residential schemes. Post pandemic, the firm has diversified its client base across Europe and the Middle East, splitting its pipeline into sectors with leads for each. This has seen the firm appointed to the Euston masterplan project, with the masterplanning and architectural lead naming Plan A to manage the interfaces between multiple projects on the site, including residential, office, retail, ticket offices, tube and rail stations.
Runners-up
3PM
This year the firm has worked on the Marshall Building for the London School of Economics, the Entopia Building for Cambridge university, and various life science schemes. The range of projects has seen 3PM focus on net zero and MMC delivery. During 2021 the consultant updated its project management toolkit, providing interactive dashboards and compiling the business’s best examples of project management tools in a single place.
Buro Four
While focusing on its traditional sectors, Buro Four has over the past year invested in areas it sees as key to future growth, such as science and innovation. As part of this strategy, the firm has worked with clients including Bruntwood SciTech and Oxford University Development and has opened a new office in Oxford. Buro Four has also developed a new team focused on data centres and has expanded its director team.
Cahill Design Consultants
As an acoustic and fire engineering specialist, it has been a big 12 months for Cahill Design Consultants as the firm works to counter design and engineering challenges across the built environment. With 75% customer retention and 25% new business, Cahill has been successful at both attracting new clients and keeping previous ones. Professional development is also a priority for the firm, which funds staff in pursuing qualifications including masters degrees and diplomas as well as for a range of other courses.
Circle Development
Build-to-rent specialist Circle Development has evolved a range of strategies for countering the tough market conditions. It has moved into the development of bespoke apps to support work efficiency, streamlined the process of on-site photo documentation, and run fortnightly company-wide CPD sessions. The firm is also working actively to increase female staff numbers.
Coreus Group
In the past year Coreus has developed a digital transformation plan that includes integrating videos, QR codes and digital technology into service delivery, and created an early engagement app to create efficiencies across the entire cost management team and ensure compliance. Project highlights include Sandy Park Hotel in Exeter and City Campus for the University of Gloucestershire.
Laminar Projects
Laminar Projects is a construction consultancy and technology start‑up hybrid. In 2021, it started on the small modular reactor programme as well as helping another key client to deliver five giant 60MW data centres for a global technology giant in 2021. The first of these saw the Laminar team turn around an already failing project and save six months off the two-and-a-half-year project duration.
Mesh Construction Consultancy
In the past year, Mesh secured positions on six frameworks, was named as a strategic partner to deliver eight new hospitals, and saw a 23% rise in new clients. It maintained a strong focus on its staff, bringing forward mid-year salary reviews and increasing salaries to help with the cost of living. Other staff wellbeing initiatives includ Free Lunch Friday.
Provelio
For North Bristol NHS Trust’s capital programme, Provelio came up with an innovative solution for fire compliance delivery methodology, and its review of a university’s planned maintenance and carbon reduction initiatives was achieved via data analysis and visualisations. It also provides employees with individual training and investment plans and sponsors them to undertake role‑specific training.
Whitby Wood
Whitby Wood has developed its own carbon calculator and a roadmap to zero that informs the firm’s training, quality assurance systems, industry engagement and approach to projects. Project highlights include CLT and glulam community building The Space in Enfield, the timber structures for the Abba voyage arena – halving the carbon content in the process, and the Design District in Greenwich.
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