Malcolm Hollis clicks on Nottingham

In the fierce battle for technology and innovation talent, Malcolm Hollis is taking a break from the norm. The company has set up a new tech centre – not in London, Manchester or Birmingham, but in Nottingham.

Twenty-five staff members have been recruited to a new Nottingham office that aims to digitise the building consultancy’s working practices, from 3D modelling of new developments and augmented reality to making pricing more efficient for clients.

Alongside servicing clients across the East Midlands, the centre will lead a new Malcolm Hollis modernisation strategy, run by Michael Robinson, who heads the office and is the firm’s business transformation and technology partner. The 4,484 sq ft office opened last month on Nottingham’s Maid Marion Way.

Malcolm Hollis associate Richard Morris will move from Malcolm Hollis’s Birmingham office to head the Nottingham building consultancy team.

Robinson’s reasons for setting up a digital operation in Nottingham are several: the city is home to a number of data businesses, such as Experian and TDX; larger cities are more competitive in the war for talent; Nottingham sits centrally to the company’s 16 UK offices; and the city has two universities from which to attract people. Then there’s the simple fact that Robinson lives in Nottingham.

Long-standing clients

“We have a number of long-standing East Midlands clients, and see it as a region that is going to see growth in the commercial property sector, so we wanted to establish a local office for that market,” says Robinson.

“We have also tried to match our office opening strategies to where staff actually live, as that improves their work-life balance. Plus, Nottingham is becoming something of a tech hub for the Midlands.”

Malcolm Hollis, which employs 350 people across eight countries, says it is among the first consultancies of its kind to establish a dedicated technology hub, which is the company’s third-largest office outside London.

This “business transformation unit” has a team of 19 that are responsible for sourcing and implementing technological advances across the business’s 22 European and UK offices.

“We’ve been working with fee-earners to learn how we can join our data together in order to bring greater value to our clients, rather than relying on paper and spreadsheets,” says Robinson.

“Technology businesses are constantly creating innovative tools to drive the property industry forward. Building surveying is often seen as an antiquated skill that still does things the way they were done 100 years ago. Whilst this is clearly an exaggeration, it is not too far from the truth. As a firm, we have always had a reputation for doing things differently, taking an innovative approach to our work, and embracing new technologies to make the next step forward. What we must do is adopt new ways of working and using new technologies to enhance our offering, creating greater value to the client through improved efficiency.”

Integrate and standardise

The aim will be to integrate and standardise all the company’s software to reduce errors and share information more clearly.

Robinson says recruiting talent to enable these changes is a challenge, but staff tend to be more loyal in smaller cities, and the living costs are lower. According to the Tech Nation 2017 report, average advertised digital salaries in Nottingham are £44,000 compared with £62,000 in London and £47,350 in Manchester.

“As part of our search we actually canvassed opinions from potential tech recruits about an out-of-town business park location versus city centre for attracting staff, and being near a vibrant city centre was seen to be key factor for them.”

He adds that finding new office space of the right size in the right location wasn’t easy. Indeed, Nottingham has lost 20% of its office stock to residential through PDR, according to Lambert Smith Hampton, with grade-A space in particularly short supply.

However, office rents in Nottingham are cheap: unlike many competing regional cities, the city’s office market has yet to break the £20 per sq ft barrier.

Robinson is keen to make it clear, however, that the choice of office was not a cost-saving exercise. He points to the fact that the new office at Park Row is in the heart of Nottingham’s professional district, underlining how seriously the company is taking the new digital push and how it is not merely a back-office function.

Fee-earning will be left to other people in the company, with the major emphasis being on consultancy.

Malcolm Hollis senior partner John Woodman highlights the Midlands’ wider inward investment story. “Increasing our presence in the Midlands is important to our business as we see continued growth being driven by the Midlands Engine,” he says.

“Creating such a large, standalone team that is tasked with focusing on technology and innovation is vital to the future development of not just our business, but the sector as a whole.”

Nottingham may not be London, Birmingham or Manchester just yet, but it is certainly heading in the right direction.