A trio of former directors from consultancy Hollis have opened the doors at their own project management and building surveying business.
Air Building Consultancy has been set up by Carl Sablon, Charlie Wildash and Karl Stansbie. The new venture will offer project management services including design and specification, contract administration and principal designer work, as well as building surveying tasks such as pre-acquisition and vendor surveys, pre-lease surveys and dilapidations.
The founders are prioritising a focus on environmental, social and governance issues in their work.
“There’s been a massive shift towards ESG in the last three or four years,” Sablon tells EG. “If we take the industrial and logistics sector as an example, we know that we need to increase the EPCs of a lot of assets – over 78% of the sector, that’s 1.1bn sq ft we need to work on. There’s a massive opportunity there and so ESG has become the biggest priority for our clients and their investors. Regardless of how the market has been stagnating for the past year or 18 months, there’s always investment that’s coming into that sector [for ESG].”
That sustainability focus extends into the business of Air itself, which has a pending B Corp status and aims for full accreditation once it passes the requirement of a year in business.
“We’re very keen to make Air both purposeful and profitable,” says Stansbie. “We want to make sure we’re providing excellent advice but doing so responsibly.”
Expect to see the Air team arriving at sites by train or bike rather than car or plane. Stansbie adds: “We’ve done tonnes of EPC and sustainability-led projects and we’re very keen to share all that knowledge with clients. But as a business we also want to make sure that we’re a zero-carbon company as well. We’ve signed up to the UK business climate commitment to achieve net zero carbon by 2030. We’re keen to be very open about our journey.”
Lessons from a past life
The three worked together for a decade at Hollis. Wildash had the longest stint at the company, at 16 years, with roles including head of pre-lease and head of dilapidations.
Sablon spent 12 years there, latterly as head of industrial and logistics, while Stansbie worked at the firm for a decade. All three left last September.
“Our time at Hollis was great and was the foundation for a great career in the industry,” says Wildash. “But we all felt the need for a fresh challenge – the challenge that you can get from establishing, managing and growing your own business.”
That’s not to say the three won’t take inspiration from their time in a company that grew at the speed of Hollis. “Commercialism is one of the biggest things,” says Stansbie when asked what lessons from his past role will help him setting up shop at Air. “From day one at Hollis as graduates in the business, we had great exposure to great clients. That client-first approach is something we will definitely all carry forward and will be embedded in Air.”
Building out
The company has opened in flexible office space in London’s West End, at 85 Great Portland Street, W1. But as the business gets off the ground the three founders are keen to pick a permanent home.
That will certainly be needed by the time they take on more staff. Sablon describes Air as “a director-led company” in which he and his co-founders will be involved in projects “from inception all the way through to completion”. But coming from Hollis – which more than quadrupled its workforce over the years they worked there – they know that winning big business will eventually require a bigger team.
“We’d like to bring in a few more experts in a few of the building services areas,” says Stansbie. “Let’s, for example, say we pick up a reasonable amount of dilapidations work – there’s only so much one, two or three of us can do. We might need to add people to do due diligence work and what have you moving forward… We’re ambitious guys and we want to grow the business – albeit we want to do it sustainably.”
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