Member Article

Green light for RED's new Tyneside office

A GLOBAL engineering consultancy has moved to larger offices in Newcastle to cope with its expanding team.

Red Engineering Design Ltd (RED), which has offices in London, Oxford, Guildford, Dublin, Dubai, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Singapore, Clark and Manila, opened a Tyneside office in Hoults Yard six years ago. A team of four established the presence in the region in 2016 and moved to a larger office on the Yard three years later because of an increase in numbers.

Three years on and RED is having to move again as its team has expanded to 32 – and more recruitment is in the pipeline. As well as recruiting established and experienced professionals, RED also regularly recruits graduates from the region’s universities and apprentices from Gateshead College.

“Our growth in Newcastle – and across the UK - has been remarkable. It was only three years ago that we expanded into new offices, but we quickly outgrew them,” explained Mark Smith, RED’s Managing Director for the EMEA region.

“A lot of our work involves datacentres, but we’re diversifying and picking up work in several other sectors including health, hotels and aviation. The increase in work has led us to open two new UK offices – in Guildford and Dartford – and a new office in Munich, Germany. In 2015 we had 235 employees globally, but now we have about 850,” 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. The company, which acquired Irish engineering consultancy Callaghan in 2020, is owned by the French multinational utility company Engie.

“Although our team here is mostly from the north east, the vast majority of the work we do is on international projects. More and more of our work is around clients’ zero carbon and energy efficiency agendas which is an area of real expertise for us,” said Mark.

“Our expansion was continuing anyway, but rapidly accelerated during the Covid lockdowns, which also changed the way in which we work. We now have a hybrid working model across all of our offices, including Newcastle. Our employees are expected to be in the office for 40 per cent of their time over a month, which our team Is happy with.

“They’re also happy we’re staying at Hoults Yard – when we indicated we had to move into larger offices, the team was very clear they wanted to stay here. It’s an inspirational and aspirational place and we have the flexibility to continue growing here, “Mark added.

And further growth is certainly on the cards.

“We have a great track record and reputation in the sector which is an area of massive potential so we’re forecasting further growth in this area and also in the Energy Transition Sector which will see many of our customers adopt greener, high availability infrastructure solutions which RED is uniquely placed to deliver,” said Mark.

Two of RED’s newest recruits are apprentice Georgia Pickering and graduate Natish Kumar. Georgia is studying a mechanical engineering apprenticeship and spends a day a week at TDR College and the remainder of her time working for RED.

“It’s really interesting work I’m thoroughly enjoying it and I’m learning so much from the RED team – everyone is so helpful,” she said.

Natish graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in electrical and power engineering and is also enjoying his first few months with RED: “The range and diversity of the work I’m busy with is interesting – at the moment I’m working on a European datacentre project,” he said.

Charlie Hoult, MD at Hyhubs, which owns and runs Hoults Yard, said: “I’ve followed RED’s continuing growth with amazement. It’s one of our many success stories and 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 .