Commercial Real Estate Development Consulting and Services for Investors

Our ‘full bandwidth’ approach prioritises managing risk – and helps clients to get the best value from an investment at every stage. Our specialists advise on, lead, and manage all aspects of the property development cycle. We have experts on land assembly, project brief and design, spatial and town planning, and project management.

Our project management team set all professional team appointments, manage construction activities, and draw up a procurement strategy to select contractors. They’ve worked on some of the country’s most high-profile developments, and have a wealth of experience in managing large and small scale projects.

We’re committed to delivering the best development management service on the market. That means that we can integrate technical partners into a development project if needed, and engage third party specialists – such as legal advisers.

We’re an established leader in the field, and have been called on to consult on some of the country’s most prominent development schemes and land sales.

The wide array of interconnected services we’ve built up reflects our expertise and flexibility, and a commitment to giving clients a complete service offering - we advise and assist on buying, selling, leasing, or developing all land types. Our in-house capabilities include building surveying, planning and sector-specific specialisms.

Our overriding aim is to support you in getting optimal value out of your asset. That could entail cutting costs, getting the best price when transacting land or managing your project or property; the advice we provide is finely adjusted to meet your needs and objectives.

Our capabilities include:

• Viability modelling and testing
• Strategy advice for landowners incl. planning
• Option agreements, promotion agreements, joint venture and sale agreements
• Negotiation with adjoining landowners/developers and agreement of equalisation arrangements
• Negotiations with local planning authorities and developers
• Market research and demand studies incl. soft market testing
• Marketing strategies
• Land sales and acquisitions
• Affordable housing advice
• Valuation reports
• Expert witness and proof of evidence
• Occupier/operator identification and negotiations

Key contact

Tom Marshall

+44 (0)20 7911 2336

Urban sites are especially complex, as they will usually have been previously developed. Our Site Assembly experts manage the patchwork of occupiers and owners who often have a stake in the site, helping to drive the development forward.

Many sites are assembled by agreement, but compulsory purchase powers are sometimes needed. We support clients throughout the CPO process, ensuring that the project timeline is observed. Projects we’ve worked on range from small residential sites through major regeneration and estate renewal schemes, to airport and transport-related development.

Site assembly can seriously affect people living and working within a site. This is particularly true of regeneration schemes. We can help you to cushion the impact of a scheme by setting up resident and business assistance offers, providing crucial support for local communities and business during the development period.

Our clients include local authorities and housing associations, through to private sector developers. We advise and assist them throughout the development process, beginning with the masterplanning phase. From the start our specialists make sure that the site assembly is fully integrated with the project’s commercial and planning aspects.

In every project we deploy a blend of technical expertise, an understanding of the political and legal environment, and detailed knowledge of commercial development – delivered by registered valuers, planners and surveyors.

We’re committed to getting your project off the ground.

Key contact

Virginia Blackman

+44 (0)20 7911 2583

From the private investor hoping to develop a small site, to policy makers looking for a way to incentivise house building; finance and funding is always an essential part of the process.

Our versatility and team expertise means we advise on projects in every sector. We’ve worked on everything from the development of the i360 tower in Brighton, to major regeneration schemes in London and Birmingham.

We have excellent relationships with funding partners, and can help you to raise finance for your projects at the best rate. We’re committed to only finding you partners who are fully aligned with your objectives.

If you’d like a detailed financial appraisal of a development, we can design and build financial models specifically for your project – be it small scale, or a multi-phase regeneration scheme. Our models give complete transparency on how an appraisal calculates outputs. And it will measure your returns and finance structure, based on a range of different metric and scenario comparisons.

Key contacts

Jonathan Stanlake

+44 (0)161 956 4108

Gareth Conroy

+44 (0)161 956 4477

We’ve worked on some of the country’s largest partnership projects, helping to align our clients’ objectives and interests with those of the other parties.

We can help sustain and reinforce the partnership at every phase of development –feasibility, strategy, delivery and management. Our experts have an excellent track record of working on a broad range of agreements, from corporate and contractual joint-ventures to traditional, arms-length partnerships.

We’ve built up significant experience of working on public-private ventures, often the most challenging forms of development and investment to deliver. Our development consultants are skilled at bringing public and private interests into alignment in public-private partnerships, and minimising friction.

To reach a successful outcome requires cross-disciplinary collaboration. We’ve integrated our technical and market capabilities with sector expertise – our planning, regeneration, investment, development, finance and procurement experts will work together on your partnership project. They’ll also tap into the expertise of our consultants from other parts of the company, to meet the specific demands of the project.

We also support commercial clients on structuring and implementing wholly private partnership models.

We give our clients the advice and help they need to see their project through to completion.

The strategies we draw up are always rooted in your objectives, which could be financial or regenerative. Our range of services, experience and broad talent pool means that we’re able to deploy experts with the right skills - and sector knowledge - to ensure a project is delivered to schedule.

We advise on a spectrum of delivery models, from direct delivery through to joint-venture, development partnership and conditional land sales. Our experts also assist in the procurement of delivery partners. We’re able to design and implement the full range of procurement processes, including traditional OJEU, and the use of government panels. And if needed, we create procurement mitigation strategies for you.

We’re often called on by public sector clients looking to leverage their assets – usually as part of wider regeneration strategies. Our experience means we’re perfectly placed to advise you if you’re a company working as a delivery partner with the public sector.

Our technical experts help them to navigate agreements, considerations and legal aspects relating to common law rights of light within developments.

We use cutting-edge software and technology to determine exactly what your rights are - or your potential liabilities – swiftly, and with an exceptionally high degree of accuracy.

A rights of light dispute can’t always be resolved in isolation. Our valuation and compulsory purchase specialists (CPO) are a key part of our service, helping to deal with the thorny issues of unreasonable compensation demands, and threats of injunction. That rich knowledge base can help you to get the best out of your site.

We’re here to give you the advice and support you need to avoid - or mitigate – the types of problem which occur before, during and after development.

This involves everything from effective property and facilities management, to drawing up expansion plans and finding investors.

Our advisers help you to drive efficiency targets and economic growth and regeneration, secure investment funding and streamline your processes. At the heart of our service is a complete range of property and facilities management services, delivered to both the public and private sectors.

It’s an integrated package that’s made possible by drawing on our reservoir of talent. Our advisors - and asset management planning management experts – work alongside our surveyors, development control planners, financial consultants, facilities management consultants, and regeneration specialists. The cross-sector expertise of our team covers both the public and private sectors, from banks, energy companies and automotive to local authorities, health trusts, and blue light agencies.

Our relevant headline services include:

• Estate and workplace strategy
• Real estate function effectiveness
• Strategic asset planning and estate strategy
• Business cases and feasibility studies, incl. financial modelling
• Office workspace strategy and HQ relocation
• Delivery strategy (capital investment/ transformation programmes)
• Delivery structures incl. contractual and corporate structures
• Collaborative solutions and One Public Estate
• Project management

Key contact

Guy Brett

+44 (0)20 7911 2506

Our development and valuation surveyors provide technical support and advice from the outset of a development project. They examine options appraisal, feasibility and development and financial structuring, and help to keep everything firmly on track and within budget. 

Our bespoke viability models factor in client types and details, and specific information about the development or asset. We deploy industry-standard models to assess value. Evaulating your scheme’s viability is a highly technical exercise, involving a number of specialisms. We harness the collective experience and wisdom of our experts to gauge viability – from our quantity surveying teams, through to our construction project managers, rights of light experts and, of course, our sector-focussed transactional teams.

We have a direct line to the latest market data through our in-house research team, assuring our clients of advice that always factors in current commercial conditions.

Key contacts

Jacob Kut

+44 (0)20 7911 2829

Jonathan Bernstein

+44 (0)20 7911 2403

Investment can have a profoundly positive effect on a locality, if properly targeted – and executed.

We work on every type of regeneration scheme, a remit that spans town and city centres to large housing estates in need of complex renewal.

Our regeneration specialists help clients to create more resilient and sustainable places on a local and nationwide scale. The regeneration journey can be both long, and complex, and our clients appreciate the fact that we can accompany them on every step. We identify the initial need for intervention and put together specialised, multidisciplinary teams to guide our clients through the various options open to them.

Once a strategy has been agreed, we’re then heavily engaged in the implementation process. We’re sensitive to the disruptive effect that regeneration may have on a community in the short term. As a result, our consultants work actively with residents and local businesses to minimise the impact of a project. It’s a collaborative approach that’s essential if a scheme is going to have longer-term vitality.

By drawing on the combined expertise of our specialists across the company, we act as an interface between planning, design and development – providing informed, clear advice on all aspects of the regeneration process.

Key contacts

Martyn Saunders

+44 (0)20 7911 2037

Nicola Rigby

+44 (0)161 956 4201

Engaging with occupiers, communities and wider stakeholders has become a really critical part of our business on behalf of both investor clients and local authorities. We help to create differentiating experiences that ensure our clients can create a conversation with their communities and raise their development’s profile and footfall where needed.

Our projects range in size across sectors and at different stages of the property lifecycle, from office properties and business parks to retail schemes and mixed-use developments –wherever it’s located, we have the specialists and access to local knowledge to effectively create and deliver marketing and engagement plans that enhance the experience of users, visitors, occupiers and prospective occupiers.

Make sure you have the engagement, communications and relationships you need to ensure successful occupier retention, leasing strategies and enlivenment. Choose to Engage.