Member Article

RED Engineering expand Hoults Yard office

A GLOBAL engineering consultancy is moving to new offices in Newcastle because of continuing growth.

Red Engineering Design Ltd (RED), which has offices in London, Oxford, Dubai, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Singapore and Manila, opened a Tyneside office in Hoults Yard three years ago. A team of four, led by Director Mark Smith, established the presence in the region and the move to much bigger offices on Hoults Yard will accommodate the expanded team which is now 16 strong.

“Our growth in the UK has been remarkable. I think by the end of the year we’ll likely have 300 employees globally, and may well have opened another two offices,” explained Mark.

“Our move within Hoults Yard is to cope with our growing team within the north east and we should be in our new offices by the end of the summer. We incorporated another space into our existing office last year, but we quickly outgrew that too so were on the lookout for new offices on the yard. We’ve been very happy here and weren’t really interested in looking elsewhere.

“We’re collaborating with the Hoults Yard architect in designing our new space – and those at the Yard couldn’t have been more helpful or accommodating,” he added.

RED is an international, award-winning building services consultancy, designing MEP services for infrastructure, new buildings and upgrade projects, with a focus on low energy solutions. They design for mixed-use projects, datacentres, offices, hotels, residential, retail and high-rise buildings.

“It’s a very busy office and about 90 per cent of the work done in Newcastle is on international projects. Tyneside’s transport links with Europe and the wider world were one of the reasons we opened an office here. One of the other primary factors was that we have access to quality engineers here in the North East,” Mark said.

A lot of RED’s current projects involve datacentres: “It’s a really buoyant area for us. There is a huge growth in the need for datacentres worldwide and it’s an area we specialise in. The growth is particularly strong in developing countries,” explained Mark.

Other areas of growth are commercial offices and hotels, although recent projects have included the Jack Warner Stand at Lord’s Cricket Ground; the ITV Studios in Leeds, and, closer to home, North Durham Hospital.

“We have about 120 projects ongoing in the UK at the moment, so we’re very busy. I think our success has been down to our people – we take a great deal of care in recruiting. Out of 1,000 CVs so far this year, we hired 30 people. While we are recruiting, we are also working hard to retain our staff and have some of the best retention rates in the industry. Unusually for the sector we have a high ratio of senior staff who are closely involved in projects and their expertise and commitment to projects has certainly increased our reputation,” said Mark.

Two of the newest recruits in Newcastle are Associate Garry Norton and Bryony Watson who has joined as a graduate mechanical engineer from Heriot-Watt University.

“As a recent graduate, I have found the team in the RED Newcastle office to be very welcoming, and the chance to get involved on some major projects so soon after graduation has been a great start to my career as a Mechanical Engineer,” said Bryony Watson

Garry added: “It is a privilege to be appointed by such a respected, dynamic and forward-thinking organisation. I am looking forward to contributing to RED’s success and reputation, applying all of my skills and experience in the building services sector.”

Charlie Hoult, owner of Hoults Yard, said: “I’ve followed RED’s growth with amazement at their client stories. It’s so brilliant to hear of a Newcastle firm working on, say, a Qatari engineering project to establish 10 data centres - each needing more power than 40 RVI hospitals. It’s a hidden gem relying on the technical expertise we can offer in the region and part of the yard’s amazing mix of international winners.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Hoults Yard .