Sixth months ago when I wrote about my annual milestones I recall I bench marked the year with two social events – our summer companywide trip to York Races and the Christmas Party. Well we did York, and owing to the companies size not only did we grace the champagne lawns at the racecourse but we had our own rooftop terrace bar for pre-race drinks and canapés. All enjoyed and it was great to be able to share the time with everyone.
Well as always at Brindle & Green a lot has changed in a short space of time and boy has it been busy! We’ve had some new arrivals which always adds an injection of new energy and excitement into the building. We’ve also been able to add some really good experience into the business as well as provide opportunities for those starting out in their careers.
We have celebrated quite a few promotions, qualifications, charterships and ever increasing grades of professional membership and, as I get older I take more pride in staff development than almost any other element of the job of running a growing business.
We have also restructured almost all departments within the business with enhanced bandings in place which has resulted in significant salary rises. This will be an ongoing process including developing the companies already enhanced benefits packages further; but an important one as an employer committed to ensuring we are doing the absolute best we can by our dedicated team.
In just the last few weeks we have learnt that our neighbours who we share our 300 year old dairy farm office with have sadly gone into administration and so we now have the opportunity to secure a longer term future in our current location in what will undoubtedly be an even more beautiful place to work. I loved the engagement from the whole company when we rebranded and uplifted our offices last year so we can rightly all be excited about this new project for the new year.
Beyond anything though, this year will be one defined by the need for new systems and processes. Thanks to the help of Middlestone, an external expert, we will be launching a new project management system in the new year along with a set of new processes to reduce stress, improve performance and enhance our delivery including predetermined and fixed dates for document issue.
To help with client experience and project quality we are launching a new department that we have currently called ‘Projects’. The department, to be headed by Director Lucie Sweet will act as the lead on projects where we are instructed on more than one technical discipline. It provides a simpler but more comprehensive way of managing these larger and complex projects.
Our longer term plans to break into the planning and masterplanning sectors have finally found their feet and are being spearheaded by Henry Collier Knight.
This means that we are increasingly seeing sites come forward that we are designing sites, managing the application and have inputted almost all key technical data.
As many of the staff will tell you, I always look into the new year with a sense of trepidation as to what the year may be like in business. So it was great to hold our first ever senior management away days last month to look at growth trends, to review budgets, the new systems, recruitment strategies and more.
As we hit 50 staff I couldn’t do what I do with Brindle & Green without the support of not just the senior team but the whole company. I’m incredibly proud that the culture that evolved at Brindle & Green many years ago has been retained despite notable growth.
We go into the new year with the prospect of some good projects continuing, some new ones starting, expanding office spaces, no doubt a few new faces and a whole new system to ensure we are doing it in the most efficient and stress free way for our staff but demonstrating maximum benefit to our clients.
I will finish by saying that during our place at the Midland Business Master Awards where we came runners up for ‘employer of the year’ we drank far too much and splashed out on some brilliant corporate events for 2024 which provides a great opportunity to meet up with clients old and new at the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Royal Ascot to name drop a few! And so I look forward to seeing some of you there.
We are excited to announce that Emily Stone has joined our ecology team as a Consultant Ecologist.
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