Hardies Property & Construction Consultants, Scotland’s largest multi discipline surveying firm, with fourteen offices throughout Scotland – has embarked on a new era by lining up a new “First XI” team of newly appointed partners, four of them from Edinburgh.
The firm, which has over one hundred members of staff across its office network has been preparing for the future by carrying out a detailed internal selection process to identify the “rising stars” who will contribute to the firm’s future growth. With some of its long serving partners having just retired, or about to retire in the near future, Hardies has appointed eleven new partners in all, resulting in a team of sixteen Equity Partners in total to lead the firm forward.
The new partners will take up their posts on 1st April 2015.
The new partners are Paul Duncan, (Valuation), Danny McArthur and Martin McConnell, (Building Surveying) in the Dunfermline office; Allan Smith (Quantity Surveying), Kate Bilbrough (Building Surveying), David Vince (Building Surveying) and Murray Warner (Project Management) in the Edinburgh office; Gary Ovenstone (Partner in the St Andrews office); Neil Moir (Valuation) in Hardies Aberdeen office; Keith Gifford in Hardies Dalkeith office and Darron McKay, (Quantity Surveying) from the Dundee office who completes the line up.
Hardies Managing Partner Derek Ferrier said: “It’s a new era for Hardies – we are very excited to unveil our new Partners and are confident that we have the right people to lead the company forward. We’ve invested in staff over many years and now we’re putting our trust in our staff. Hardies has been providing surveying services for more than one hundred years and the purpose of this succession planning is to provide the right platform for future growth in the next one hundred years. We are only custodians of the Hardies name and need to ensure the firm continues to grow.”
Mr Ferrier explained that the firm, which provides a range of professional property and construction consultancy services including project management, quantity surveying, building surveying to valuation surveying and dispute resolution support services, advertised internally for prospective new partners. They were required to put together a presentation demonstrating what unique attributes they could bring to Hardies as a partner in the firm. “We wanted to know what they would bring to the table to lead Hardies forward and help the firm to continue to grow and develop,” he said.
“It was an extremely interesting exercise and really helped us to clarify who the best people were and it did not depend on how old they were or how long they had been with us,“ he continued. “Technology for example is moving so fast. We need to release our young stars and see what they can do in this vein. We want to be at the forefront of our profession and using new technology to our advantage is one of the ways in which we will continue to achieve that.”
It was in the early 1990s that Hardies developed its “one stop shop approach” of property and construction related consultancy services, adding services such as project management and building surveying to complete the range of services required from inception to completion in the development process.
The firm’s latest service is dispute resolution support, assisting clients in resolving issues without adopting formal dispute resolution procedures in a bid to avoid costly litigation.
“Our new partners will continue to look at our position and service offering in the current market place and we are confident that we will continue to come up with the right mix of services to look after our diverse client base which covers educational establishments, banks, building societies, private developers, leisure and healthcare, social housing and numerous Councils,” said Derek Ferrier.
PHOTO back row – Judith Darnell (Business & HR Manager), David Vince (new partner, Edinburgh), Kate Bilbrough (new partner, Edinburgh ), Neil Moir (new partner, Aberdeen,) Murray Warner (new partner, Edinburgh), Allan Smith (new partner, Edinburgh), Paul Duncan (new partner, Dunfermline), Keith Gifford (new partner, Dalkeith), Danny McArthur (new parrner, Dunfermline), Gary Ovenstone (new partner, St Andrews), and Martin McConnell (new partner, Dunfermline).
Darron McKay, new partner from Dundee is not pictured.
Existing Partners are front row : Derek Ferrier (Managing Partner), Stephen Craig, Craig Gilmour and Gordon Butt
Hardies serves clients in both the private and public sectors providing a comprehensive property and construction consultancy service, including property valuation, building and quantity surveying and project management. The firm also handles the leasing and sale of commercial and industrial buildings; CDM Co-ordination, Dispute Resolution and the provision of Energy Performance Certificates. The firm has offices in St Andrews, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Dalkeith, Stirling, Perth, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Paisley, Hamilton, Helensburgh and Galashiels. WJR Christie in Dundee is also part of the Hardies portfolio. Further details at www.hardies.co.uk
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