Hardies on move despite ‘tough’ 2012

Managing partner Derek Ferrier told Scotland on Sunday he was in discussions to buy a company in the Thames Valley, which would likely lead to contracts south of the Border and also supply work for the practice’s ten offices in Scotland.

Ferrier will also open Hardies’ first permanent base in Glasgow in the spring, having this year rented three desks in serviced offices.

After winning project management and quantity surveying work on Coatbridge College’s £15.5 million redevelopment, plus being added to Strathclyde Police’s roster of companies, Ferrier is convinced Hardies can now successfully enter the west of Scotland market.

Ferrier said: “We opened an office in Galashiels last year, which has been a big success. We never used to win business in the Borders, but now we have a team on the ground and people can see our presence, we’ve got contracts.

“We bought chartered surveying firm Christie in Dundee last year and that’s led to contracts to build the next Wellcome Trust building for Dundee University and work at the printing presses for DC Thomson. We’re still using the Christie brand but customers now have more confidence in placing contracts with it because it has the financial backing of a much larger company.”

He hopes the same will happen south of the Border, with some of the calculations, technical drawing and other remote work being carried out by teams in Scotland.

The firm, founded in Dunfermline in 1913, has eight members in its limited liability partnership (LLP) and more than 80 staff, including 58 qualified fee-earners.

Ferrier said: “The company will celebrate its 100th birthday soon, and we’ve never had an overdraft in that time. My job as managing partner is to keep it that way – but we came close last year.”

He said the firm’s turnover for the year to 31 March fell by about 10 per cent to just under £4m, with profits dropping by about 30 per cent to £900,000. The eight members of the LLP do not take salaries but instead share the profits between themselves.

Ferrier said the company had not made any staff redundant during the recession and he aimed to keep his team together during the continuing downturn.

But he warned: “2012 will be the toughest year yet for the sector. With all the public sector cutbacks beginning to bite, we’re already seeing a downturn in the number of big contracts that are available.”

Ferrier is “100 per cent sure” that some of his rivals will go bust in the year ahead, but he aims to keep his business intact so that it can win more work when the market begins growing again.

He added: “Looking back at our company accounts over the past 100 years, our results and the number of valuation surveys we carried out act as good barometers for the wider economy. You can see troughs during the world wars. We had been on a rising curve since the three-day week in the 1970s, so the downturn looked inevitable.”