Architecture Awards 2021

32 BUILD 2021 Architecture Awards Apr21861 Best Architecture & Development Firm 2021 – Midlands & Retail Project of the Year: Costa Coffee – Coalville, Leicestershire Integrity, competence, and relationships. These are Duggan Associates’ founding values and those similarly shared by the RIBA. These principles and standards of behaviour help guide the company’s approach to projects in a responsible and professional manner, to ensure consideration is applied, with the mission of delivering successful projects. Whilst these values have not changed since the company began, with each project it has certainly learnt and re-informed its processes to enhance future opportunities. Duggan Associates’ overall mission is to provide an all-inclusive facility for clients, to help them realise their design dreams, to help turn a house into a home, a unit into a functioning business space, a piece of history into a legacy. uggan Associates offers a full suite of services from inception to completion for residential, office, commercial, industrial and heritage projects including a full planning service. It can also capably perform roles such as principal designer, contract administrator, employers agent and project lead. It has been undertaking these roles for four years this July, and hopes that its team and client network see it continue. One of Duggan Associates’ latest projects was a new build circa 1,800sqft retail project. This was during the height of lockdown, a material logistical headache. The key challenges here were the consistent and reliable delivery of materials and authority services (water, electric) to comply to programme. The team overcame these challenges by strengthening communication and relationships with the supply chain which fortunately put the company in good stride. Company director, Sean Duggan is particularly proud of his company’s rapid build programme and ability to ensure the process was smoothly operated. Another strong moment was how well the team collaborated during difficult times and poured their effort into delivering a truly remarkable project. Communication is a strong core component of a project. There should be clear roles and responsibilities, with consistent updates to clients and the project team to ensure clarity in the progression of the tasks. Another is quality control; it undertakes many checks before, during and after task execution in both its drawing and construction functions. It often finds that with such D monitoring procedures, it mitigates time and expense in the future investigating and remedying of any errors. COVID-19 has caused significant disruption to the region in relation to design and construction. The company has heard of a number of clients not wishing to start any projects in the past 18 months as they are unable to rely on material logistics, council support for planning and conditional information, solicitor sale lead times, and many other factors as a result of furlough, trade disruptions and a severe backlog of work. Duggan Associates was fortunate to have clients mostly stand by it and continue to work with it throughout lockdown. It is this industry lag that may cause disruption to further projects at all stages and the company hopes it will recover over the course of the next year. Looking towards the next year and onwards, Duggan Associates has big plans, including hopes to secure planning permission for a paragraph 79 bespoke home in open countryside, as well as an industrial unit of 20,000sqft. It is actively working on a multitude of sites of varying scales and stages with the aim of withstanding the industry lag that it and other companies are experiencing. The long-term ambition would be to not only develop projects for its clients, but also invest in development sites for itself. Ultimately, it hopes that this next step will help further the growth of the company and its team. Company: Duggan Associates Ltd Contact: Sean Duggan Email: [email protected] Website: www.dugganassociates.co.uk