QS News Awards 2006

Best New QS firm

AA Projects
AA Projects started with a single office, and four staff, in Liverpool in 1999. Over the last seven years this consultancy has witnessed steady growth, especially in the education sector where it has worked on a string of college projects. Today it employees 35 staff and projected turnover for next year stands at nearly £4m, with new offices on the cards in Leeds and Newcastle. It also operates throughout Europe and the Middle East.

DBK Back
A management buy-out within Midlands-based Back Group in August 2005 led to the creation of DBK Back, with three principal directors taking charge. Within 12 months this new entity achieved an annual turnover of £5.9m (80% from existing clients) while staff numbers rocketed from 52 to 80. Two months ago the firm bought a utility cost management outfit, and created DBK Connect. It also managed the first relocation from the Olympic zone.

Norman Rourke Pryme
NRP came about following the closure of a QS/PM firm with 16 of its staff setting up on their own. The new practice worked with existing clients and within one year grew to 40 staff. Key clients include BAE Systems, the Metropolitan Police and the Co-operative Society. Since starting out in 2003, NRP has opened five offices – three in the UK and two in Czech Republic – as well as forming a joint venture in Italy.

Sense Cost Consultancy
Established in July 2004, Sense made an immediate impact on the QS market. Led by Chris Goldthorpe, staff growth and turnover have risen by 50% each year. Clients include British Land, Minerva and Swiss Re. One of its more high profile projects is advising the Olympic Delivery Authority on Zaha Hadid’s pool project. The company says it prefers to offer ‘real time’ advice rather than relying on historical data, and being part of Mace means it can offer cutting edge technologies.

Sum
Sum, formed in 2002, recognised a gap in the market where traditional skills were dying out and not being provided by the larger practices. The firm is therefore proud of its four distinct departments, comprising Billing, PQS & project management, Final Account & Claims and development consultancy. Turnover is up 20% this year and Sum has just launched a public sector drive to keep the growth going.

Best Strategic Construction Advisor

AA Projects
Through its strategic consultancy unit, AA Projects uses its unique Curriculum Modelling Process within the further education sector. This specialist unit helps clients in the early stages of development. The firm’s flagship project, Darlington College, a £35m pathfinder scheme, involved specialist VAT advice and complex disposal and acquisition – all of which successfully helped kick-start a £170m regeneration plan for the city.

CR Management
Addressing the severe skills shortage the industry faces, this firm provides a unique project audit service. It is aimed at helping residential developers understand the true cost of construction and the reasons why overspends occur. Audits assess where overruns occur as well as provide details on how they can be prevented. The service also gives a clear assessment of contracts status and reviews each subcontract package.

Turner & Townsend
Specialist advice including project controls, culture change management and funding advice contributed 23% to T&T’s turnover in 2006, and slated to rise to 29% next year. The firm’s commercial management work on BAA’s £4.2bn T5 project at Heathrow saw the production of a ‘Delivery Team Handbook’ and international sourcing that led to major cost cuts. T&T is also advising Nationwide on a 650-branch improvement roll-out, slashing 15% off branch spend via e-sourcing.

Best M&E Specialist Cost Consultant

Faithful+Gould
With an emphasis on maintenance, F+G’s in-house M&E cost management solutions have spread across the pond to become best practice in the States’ oil and gas refining sectors. Its in-house programmes embrace the full range of the QS, planner and PM core competencies. In the UK, the firm’s expertise in M&E has caught the attention of major blue-chip firms, with an impressive client base that includes British Nuclear Group, Boots, BT and Transco.

Franklin + Andrews
Project Diamond will create the world’s brightest light to help scientists look at atoms in the greatest detail in history. The projects highlights the expertise this firm has in the M&E field. F + A has over 30 years experience in the science sector and understands the need for a stable environment when dealing with air, water and electrical supplies. It employs over 50 staff in this area, is a founder member of the Whole Life Cost Forum and on average its specialist teams earn over £3m fee income each year from M&E activity.

Gleeds
Nearly a third of the London office’s fee turnover comes from a team of just 12 ‘multi-specialist and sophisticated’ M&E specialists. Their combined expertise covers Part L, security systems, tall buildings, passenger transport and labs. Proof of this is seen in the team’s recent list of accomplishments: data centres for Lloyds TSB, Four Seasons’ hotels, BskyB’s studios and 350 projects for BT.

Maitland QS
Since 1987, when the company was formed, MQS has specialised in this area and proved itself recently by successfully financially managing M&E installations at Bankside 1 – a major office scheme in south London. That job has now led to the QS practice being chosen for the remainder of the scheme, Bankside 2 and 3. The firm has also been acutely aware of the current skills crisis and has made a bold attempt to develop the next generation of M&E QSs by sponsoring MSc courses at Salford University.

Turner & Townsend
T&T is currently spreading its M&E specialist staff across regions as far as Singapore, the States and Angola. Its UK team numbers 25 and is relied upon to drive down costs in the face of ever-increasing Part L and renewable energy regulations that are pushing up costs during the design phase. The firm says its success is in part due to its ethos of paying as much attention to small simple jobs as to those that push engineering technology boundaries. T&T is also doing its bit for the skills shortage in the discipline by ensuring all of its graduates spend time in their M&E department.

International Achievement

Day & Johnson
The firm spotted the potential in the Polish market very early in the 1990s and has used that knowledge and experience to great effect in the last decade. Day & Johnson works across a range of markets and regions in the country and has achieved particular success for client Tesco, working on 20 new stores for the supermarket giant across the country. The firm has four offices and 40 staff in the country and is expecting further major growth in the next five years.

Ridge
This consultant has seen a fivefold increase in its international operations in the last four years. Of particular interest during that time has been its work in Uganda. Ridge oversaw the construction of the new British High Commission in Kampala. Rather than importing Western techniques the building was conceived and built as an African building using local resources and materials. Particular attention was paid to sustainability and health and safety on the project.

Savant
Last year’s winner of this award continues on its inexorable rise as an international player in project management and QSing. The firm has 10 offices across Western and Eastern Europe has worked on projects in over 50 locations. Its impressive client list includes technology outfit Intel, brewery giant SAB Miller and Rolf, Russia’s largest car dealer.

Turner & Townsend
The company is now firmly established as an international player. Last year its overseas operations grew by an impressive 57% to £43m in turnover, with 700 staff and 37 offices worldwide. This major spurt was down to organic growth as well as the acquisition of Australian outfit Rawlinsons. The company has nurtured long-running relationships with major clients such as Nissan and the Royal Bank of Scotland, following them in their international expansion.

Best Project Management

DBK Back
DBK has been selected to work on some of the most challenging large-scale regeneration projects currently taking place throughout the UK. Its core areas of expertise for PM services are in the office, industrial/distribution, leisure, medical, education and residential sectors. Recent examples of this include Sportsworld International in Derbyshire, for which it performed initial site searches as well as site and transportation appraisals, and a data centre in Surrey for a bank that involved extensive due diligence and close management of the tenant/fund relationship.

Faithful+Gould
Flawlessly spanning the public and private sector has been key to F+G’s success in project management, the Nike Europe factory store and a BSF project in Solihull demonstrating this. However, the firm’s work on ‘The Mound’ - new offices for baking group HBOS – earned praise. Its refurbishment of a 200-year old building into modern offices involved many redesigns due to the need to respect the buildings original structure, yet was successfully delivered on 11 May this year. Currently F+G is project managing the fit-out of St Pancras International Station in central London.

Hornagold & Hills
H&H recently became part of Mouchel Parkman, which is currently managing projects with a total value of over £12bn. Within the regeneration sector, the firm has been appointed as PM on the £2bn New Wembley scheme and is to act as programme manager on the £1.75bn Elephant & Castle redevelopment in central London – the largest scheme of its kind in Europe. There is also the T5 transformation project for British Airways, an RSC theatre role and several NHS contracts and new offices due in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, making H&H a strong contender for this award.