Having made itself the ‘Leading Property Development Firm’ for London in 2021, Arco Developments considers where it will take its continually growing reputation for excellence next. With a solid foundation as a past, a promising present of myriad different projects, and a bright future ahead, the exemplary team that make up this firm are going from strength to strength in construction and development.

A private sector residential developments company with a difference, Arco Developments was formed in 2013 to carry out the founder’s vision of creating an easily recognised brand. By doing this, it has made itself a developments and construction company appealing to a very specific target audience, using meaningful designs created by a skilled team with over 100 years combined years. Initially, team members Deme and David cut their teeth as high-end project managers elsewhere in the construction industry. Deme in particular became well-known in London for super prime residential properties wherein the primary focus was on the design, material, and quality of the finish.

Elsewhere, David also focused on project management for high-brow real estate, but with a different angle – one that focused more on commercial fast track building fits – these took place primarily in the city centre, creating commercial properties of market leading quality, perfectly to specification and on-budget. Other team members in Greg and Terry have a background in another area of the field still, this time in Agency, working in tandem with influential figures in the market in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of planning knowledge.

Arco’s collective focus is therefore one of combining each of these disciplines and knowledge pools to create the best property development business it can. Fundamentally, its core values specifically drill down into heightened thoughtfulness in its work, creating meaningful designs with enhanced spatial awareness, normalising the idea that creating buildings in synergy with the end-users’ lifestyle should be more prevalent. It seeks to create a way of living that can be valued by everyone living in the building.

The clientele it serves therefore range widely across the projects it takes on; mostly, they are young professionals, couples, and first-time buyers, those who will be shaping the future of the property market even further as the years go on, and it serves this demographic expertly in its operational area. Crucially, Arco wishes to deliver the best schemes to the correct market from the outset, ensuring its services match its market segment. Furthermore, it differentiates itself from the rest of its competition by way of the detail work that goes into creating and developing its ideas, putting particular emphasis on the spatial elements of the design, the materials used, and how each of them is applied. It therefore funnels significant effort into working with its design team to get every element of a build right.

This is something Arco’s clients laud as exemplary across the board, as it allows it to offer more in-depth and specification-fitting designs at the same or more competitive prices as its peers, achieving something at a greater depth and to a level that is allowing it to pull ahead of the pack. Moreover, Arco’s emphasis on pre-construction ensures that construction itself will go completely smoothly, aided even more by the brilliant and watertight project management experience of its team.

In this way, Arco’s staff are what makes it such a going concern in its industry. From its in-depth methods of client interaction to its constant dedication to ensuring their complete satisfaction, its team makes everything possible, and is the sole reason for the award wins it has been enjoying since its inception. They, critically, have forged what has become Arco’s internal culture of excellence. From the very beginning, its core has been made from the people in its ranks and their creativity, their dedication to cultivating a developments firm like no other that could create all-new innovations in a high-pressure environment.

This has allowed it to buy into a culture and ethos of imagination and leadership whilst being able to still respond effectively and in a timely manner to tight deadlines, demanding clients, and strict requirements. It strives to be just as strict with itself when it comes to setting its own parameters for success and viability when working on a project, refusing to let anything go to chance and tightly controlling the variables down to the most minute detail.

Arco, therefore, understands each team member’s duties and responsibilities are an imperative and indispensable part of what makes its team so great, allowing it to ensure that it plays to each of these strengths and that the end beneficiary of this way of working is the client and their project. This emphasis on working with a client as well as for them aided it greatly during the pandemic. Throughout the difficulties presented to it, and indeed the wider industries of the world in the macro scale, it was forced to adapt to the knock-on effects the pandemic had on its market segment, seeing that clients had less money to spend and turning towards helping its existing customers.

Apart from the challenges during the construction phases of builds caused by the logistics of operating in a global crisis, such as additional PPE needed across the board, shortage of manpower due to self-isolation, shortage of materials due to shipping issues, and programme delays, it also encountered issues with sales. In particular, this was a hurdle created by the added time to a sale that was created by the outbreak; despite the speculation of the media, construction deals were going through at a slower rate than eve before, with purchasers exhibiting more caution and therefore taking longer to confirm or deny.

Whilst understandable, Arco had to plan around this, and ensured that it had the capacity to be able to do so – given the climate and personal circumstances. Essentially, this atmosphere was one created by the banks, as many clients found them being much stricter with their money management criteria and local authority searches found themselves taking significantly more time to come through, and so Arco worked closely with its sales team to coach them through a process that had gotten so much more complex.

This is something Arco has internalised as it moves forward into 2021 and works hard to usher its industry towards recovery, planning to move forward with its healthy pipeline of upcoming projects. These will all be projects that push the boundaries, both of existing sector trends and of Arco as a business, and it is excited to broach the upcoming challenges and opportunities with the signature vim and vigour for which it has become known, focusing on its growth as an entrepreneurial business. Lastly, its friendly and approachable staff are ready to field any comments, questions, or concerns, and it encourages all prospective clients to get in touch right away to secure their place in Arco’s high-demand queue.

For further information, please contact Deme Paliouras or visit arcodevelopments.com