The Owner of a small business contacted me to help with a challenge he had. Three years previously he had bought a plot of industrial land to build a new facility on, so that he could move out of his current rented facility, into a new, purpose built show case facility, and in doing so, he could grow a business that was already bursting at the seams. His challenge was the classic MD/CEO challenge of being so busy working in the business, he had too little time to work on the business and act on the one key thing that would take load off him – growing would enable him to hire a couple of more people that would take direct workload away.

I was asked to work closely with him and his team, understand the business, how it operates and the growth strategy, so I could then work alongside the architect and develop a newly designed facility that could be a showcase HQ for years to come.

I spent a few hours with the owner, understanding his hard points, and wishes, before moving on to the rest of the team to get detail from them, that would make all the difference as to how they wished to operate. Once I had that, I then played my findings back to the owner for concurrence, before sitting down with the architect and developing a couple of schemes.

After a few iterations, we had an outline to take to the specialists for environmental input, drainage, lighting etc. before finally pulling together a pack for the constructor to quote on and then submission to planning.

The design met with a great response from all the employees and flew through planning with permission granted within 2 months (I am sure I could speed up their processes too….).

The owner was delighted as after 3 years, he can finally progress to have the new site built (which he has asked me to PM for him) and grow the business without interfering with his busy schedule.