December has brought completion of a couple of our larger commercial projects of 2019. Elizabeth House was the strip-out, extension and refurbishment of a seven floor office building next to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, City of London. The project was supervised by Tom Mellor under a traditional contract for long-standing client Courtenay Investments Ltd. Foundation Park is a new sports pavilion for Swindon Town Football Club Foundation Trust on the County Ground site. The building was rationalised within the parameters of an existing planning consent and the final design features a standing-seam single plane inclined roof giving the building its unique appearance. The construction phase was managed by James Pilling and Martin Spear.
Back in Warmley, the office is now seventeen strong with the arrival of tired ‘new dad’ Tom Hubbard as a senior technician and irrepressible ‘old dad’ Owen Faunt joining recently as our first ever architectural apprentice. Owen disappears once a week to allegedly attend college at London South Bank University. He was an insurance underwriter until recently and tells me he is working hard and very much enjoying his change of career. Thanks for your secret santa present Owen! Martha Eustace joined us on placement for six months over the summer doing a brilliant job of trying to make head or tail of our new marketing strategy and has now returned to her third year studies at the University of Bath for a well-earned rest. James Pilling is close to completing his Architecture Part 1 distance learning course and Sarah Makroum has successfully completed her first year architecture Diploma, both at Oxford Brookes University. Esther Brown is due to qualify as an architect early next year.
Housing projects continue to flourish with large schemes for Acorn at the former Brooks Dyeworks site in Ashley Down with the team very ably led by Siobhan Tarr; for Curo at Henacre Road in Lawrence Weston with Sarah Makroum; for Stonewater at Northwick Farm near Worcester with Olia Kyritsi; and for Mi-Space working for Nationwide in Swindon at Oakfield, a construction phase scheme with Jon Briscoe. Ranelagh Road in Malvern for Broadway Estates and c-t-s Construction run by Esther Brown and Martin Spear is due to complete in the spring.
We have also been busy with a couple of individual PassivHaus projects too, achieving completion of Homelands in Dundry, a private house with fantastic views north over Bristol and to the Suspension Bridge and Severn Bridges beyond, and the start on site at Clover Place in Eynsham, Oxfordshire. All in all, we reckon that we have 1,216 individual housing units either on the ‘drawing board’ or under construction, boosted by our continuing programme of refurbishment of mid and high-rise council flats in Bristol co-ordinated in necessary painstaking detail by Michael Hanson.
Work with the England and Wales Cricket Board continues apace with successful completion of phase 1 at Leyton, East London, the conversion of an existing facility to create an indoor cricket centre opened by local legend, Graham Gooch. Phase 2 in Leyton, run by Matt Bonney and further inner city projects in Bradford and Birmingham are due to come on stream in 2020.
We have also made fantastic progress with our instagram presence, masterminded by Esther Brown, and our blog by Natalie Lock, our long-suffering practice manager. Maria Steward, our office manager, has worked tirelessly to keep us all under some sort of control, usually remembers to pay us on time, and has checked the car park out on a regular basis throughout the year come rain or shine. In Autumn it was announced that we had won the small employer category of the Travelwest Business Travel Awards 2019. Well done everyone who braved the cycle path or waited for a bus over the summer. The winnings were donated to Mind UK our chosen charity for the year.
On the social side we have tried to organise an event most months during the year with the highlights being a tough ten peaks hike in typically horrendous August weather in the Brecon Beacons; a mid-summer weekend (not) camping, eating, walking, swimming and drinking at Star Cottage on the Devon coast, courtesy of the Mellor family; and a couple of trips to Bath Races to blow the company profits. The programme for 2020 is already in the planning with talk of axe throwing ( not in the office ) soon after Christmas, a casino night at the wonderful Kings Weston House in the spring, a vineyard visit ( unfortunately only to Somerset ) in the summer and a revival of our successful charity quiz night in the Autumn – bring your torches.
Siobhan Tarr continues to lead on our impressive variety of in house and RIBA organised CPD sessions. We held a fascinating half day training session recently run by Mind UK, which really brought home our vulnerability to mental ill health at work.
2019 has been very busy, challenging and rewarding in equal measure and with much more staff involvement in managing and marketing the business. With our plans to convert to full employee ownership well under way, we have much to look forward to in 2020. My thanks, as always, go to my fellow directors, Colin Powell and Jon Platt, and to a dedicated hard-working team of very talented individuals.
To our existing clients we hope you will give us the opportunity to work with you again next year and if you have not worked with us before please give us a call and we will do our very best to do a great job for you.
Happy Christmas and New Year to you all.
Jeremy Pilling
Managing Director
