Build June (2016)

Build Magazine 20 Starting a residential property development company in 2008 may seem like a quite a daunting task to undertake. However, Barclay Firth managed to overcome the many obstacles provided by the recession, and have continued to thrive as the UK property market has gone from strength to strength. We spoke to Neil Hamilton, founder of the company, to find out the secret behind their success. Barclay Firth was a company that I started single-handedly. Looking back, I feel that I had a lot to learn back then, but with each new project we persevered and pulled through, which thankfully has allowed us to become the successful business we are today. Our work as a residential property developer spans across a number of different areas, ranging from renovations and alterations of old buildings to the design and build of new homes. As well as working on our own projects, we have also worked on behalf of other people, in areas such as maintenance and repairs to buildings and other structures. For example, in the UK we experienced some pretty bad flooding over the Christmas period and we were recommended by local authorities for repairs to local infrastructure. Our first project was undertaken at a very interesting time in late 2008, which was at the very tail end of the lending boom. For this project, we received a complex loan agreement from a local building society, which would have been extremely difficult to achieve six months down the line when lending basically dried up. As you can imagine, for the next few years it was extremely difficult to get funding. In 2011 things started to move forward, but mainly for the South of England. As a Yorkshire based company, we didn’t experience any significant recovery before 2013. Fast forward to 2016, banks are now a lot keener to lend and there is a lot more competition in the industry which will ultimately benefit our business. Although we are a small business, we believe that the unique structure of our company is what allows us to compete with the major property development companies in the UK. We understand that we are going up against some very established brands, so we often undertake our own projects as principal contractor where we buy the site and employ subcontractors directly. Through this process, we hand pick our own workforce and have a network of contacts that allow us to operate in a very efficient manner. As such, we have a very tight knit team that we work with on each project. This covers all levels of the business, including architects, engineers, solicitors etc. Since our inception, we have worked very hard towards building relationships with people we trust, and this has ultimately allowed us to achieve some pretty significant savings for both ourselves and our clients. Furthermore, we don’t have a top down management structure, and I have a very hands-on approach to my job where I regularly keep in close contact with our contractors and clients. Business managers have to put the hours in themselves before employing people when it isn’t necessary. I believe that this type of approach has allowed us to become the highly efficient and streamlined business we are today. In terms of staff, we have a very low turnover rate, and this is because we invest heavily in each and every one of them. We understand that they are people who have families and mortgages and aspirations of their own, so we help them to become more experienced and competent, which we will inevitably be rewarded for in the high quality work they do. Despite the small stature of our company, we do of course hope to grow our business. At the moment we are putting a lot more emphasis on marketing and spreading the word about the high quality work that we do. It is the nature of business we are in that growth is something that can happen exponentially. While there can be stagnant periods, there are times where we have multiple opportunities that come along in quick succession. We are experiencing the latter at the moment, and are just completing the construction of five houses in Huddersfield before commencing two larger development sites in West Yorkshire which we have secured during 2016. This has been the catalyst for us to grow and develop our business even further. Alongside the continued growth of our business, we are also careful not to work beyond our capacity or to compromise the high quality of what we provide. With this in mind, we intend to grow at a manageable pace and to stick to the tried and tested formula which has served us so well. Special Feature 1605RB08 The UK’s Property Developers to Watch for 2016