Top five quantity surveyor restructures to offer facilities management to clients.
Top five QS Franklin & Andrews is restructuring strategic services and moving into facilities management in an attempt to boost fees.

The move follows the pattern of other major surveyors. Bucknall Austin has also expanded into facilities management, and Currie & Brown has moved into management consultancy through its alliance with Ernst & Young.

Franklin & Andrews chairman Martin Bishop said the practice of servicing clients on a geographical basis will be dropped in favour of client-based business units.

This means a single team based in a single office will look after a client with interests in a number of different regions. Each team will be led by a Franklin & Andrews partner.

Franklin & Andrews will now have a three-tier structure. At the top will be 50 or so partners involved in "strategic" business that will include feasibility studies, investment advice, the compilation and management of asset databases and the production of business cases.

"This is fuelled by a desire to move up the food chain and improve fees," said Bishop. He added that he wanted to see the company building more business models for clients and expanding into non-core areas such as raising finance for construction projects.

The second tier of business is the traditional construction-based surveying role. This includes project management, cost management, contract management and programme management.

The third tier would be an FM business. Bishop said that this might be developed through recruitment or by merging with an FM company or a building surveyor.

The changes are due to be implemented by next February and will probably be accompanied by a change in name. Bishop is considering a number of possibilities, and Franklin & Andrews Capital Projects has been mooted.

Bishop said that the new structure will take advantage of the latest developments in IT. He said: "One partner will have, say, responsibility for sports and leisure and will have resources with expertise scattered all over the country." They would be linked up by the Internet.

  • The removal of trade barriers in Europe has not improved consultants' chances of winning work, a survey by Franklin & Andrews has revealed.

    The QS analysed 147 Official Journal contracts from the end of May to the end of June this year.

    The survey revealed that only one of these contracts was awarded to a contractor/consultant or supplier from a European Union country different from the originating country.