Party Wall PRO

About Party Wall PRO

This is Party Wall PRO (the podcast) where surveyors tell you how they first started and how they've grown their business, making it easier for you to get to the top.

Publisher

Philippe Weyland

Category

business

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

9 Dec 2016

Latest episode

27 May 2020

Latest episodes

10 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   27 May 2020

   How to stay on top of the competition during and after COVID

   Now that party wall work has been drying up for the past two months and the majority of surveyor staff are either working from home or furloughed, how can we get back to work in an efficient way while lockdown progressively eases? Sunday’s PM speech gave broad guidelines but what can you do now to make sure instructions flow your way once business picks up again. In this podcast Philippe will explain what you can do to (i) speed up the process to get your instructions back up; (ii) run an efficient party wall practice while managing your team remotely; and (iii) save money on the way

2. 

   10 Jan 2020

   Interview with Rob French: The Future of Basements

   Rob French, an equity partner at Delva Patman Redler, tells us about the unique issues arising with digging basements next to basements and provides practical advice to surveyors confronted with these problems. You can also watch this interview in video format here. Transcript Philippe: Hi, and welcome to another edition of Party Wall PRO, the podcast. I’ve got Rob French with me today from Delva Patman Redler. He is an equity partner there. And he is here to talk to us about basements. So Rob, tell me about the excitement behind basements. You hear all the time these basements in Mayfair and stuff, these crazy things that have been dug out. And you’ve – so you’ve prepared a presentation that you’ve given at the London branch of the Pyramus and Thisbe Club and I think you’re going on tour over the next few months? I’m quite excited about this because it’s obviously a subject matter that people are interested in. So I think this time it’s going to be more kind of lecture style because of course you’ve got your material. You’ve got your slides that hopefully we will be able to put into the podcast. So I’ll leave the floor to you. Rob French: Thanks a lot. We have been doing basements for quite a while. But now we have got a new situation where, because we’ve done so many basements, we are doing basements next to basements now . So basements next basements brings in a new set of skills and a new set of legal implications and possibilities for dispute that we are now dealing with more and more. So this presentation goes through the standard issues with basements but also a lot of the intricacies where we deal with basements adjoining existing basements. I’ve tried to split this into key issues that I’ve come across and also the issues that I foresee will play out in the future. So some of this is based on issues I have dealt with and some are purely speculation of what I feel further court cases might be. So the first issue is enclosure costs with trimming overspill and trespass. The situation here is that where we agree an award where there’s a basement already done to one side and then the adjoining owner wants to excavate their own basement within that award there will be enclosure costs under Section 11(11) of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996. So they will usually be agreed by the surveyors upfront and included in the award. And then when the – what used to be the adjoining owner now the building owner, excavates down, they find that the underpins have extended further into their property than what they expected either due to poor back shuttering, concrete overspill, or other  various reasons. But they then find themselves faced with having to trim those underpins and/or set back the wall of their basement. Usually, they will opt for trimming because the floor area where the basement is undertaken is, obviously, key. What the building owner, the one now undertaking the work, usually likes to do is to suggest there’s a setoff that takes place between the costs of trimming the overspill against this Section 11(11) costs agreed. But the problems start to rise where technically and legally, you can’t actually do that because there’s no right of setoff. As soon as the enclosure is made on the underpins, moneys are owed so the adjoining owner can enforce the award to achieve those payments. So trying to explain this to the building owner that they have to pay out even when they are at loss due to trimming is quite difficult. There are other issues as well that go along with this and that is that the now building owner assumes that the tribunal of surveyors can deal with the costs. But actually, they can’t under the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996 Section 2.2. the surveyors can give the rights to trim this trespass but there’s no mechanism to award those costs against the adjoining owner. So the only way that you can actually claim costs is to go back to the original tribunal of surveyors that actually installed the underpinnings, so

3. 

   21 Oct 2019

   RICS party wall guidance 7th edition with Michael Cooper

   Michael Cooper, head of Neighbourly Matters at Colliers International and Chairman of the Working Group on RICS Party Wall Legislation and Procedure 7th edition Guidance Note walks us through the most important changes of the 7th edition and how to implement them. You can also watch this interview in video format here. Introduction PW – Welcome to another edition of Party Wall PRO the podcast It has been a while again and I’m really sorry; the reason why is because we have been busy working on the software for your schedules of condition (www.surveykit.io). Actually Michael that’s something I never actually talked to you about but our Party Wall PRO customers have been asking us for ages for a tool to help them with their scheduling and so we have developed something for phones so that they can take photos and dictate on their device and it automatically inserts photos into the report with the relevant condition avoiding the hassle after a site visit of having to go through hundreds of pictures and deciding which goes to which condition and so we have been busy developing that. Also because I wanted to have this podcast and we have been talking about this for nearly a year I think and of course with public consultation it took ages. So I’m really excited to have Michael Cooper with us, who as you probably already know is head of neighbourly matters at Colliers international and you were the chairperson of the working group on this 7th edition right? MC – That’s right PW – so the purpose of or the subject matter of this podcast is the RICS 7th edition party wall guidance note which will be effective on 1 December 2019. So this podcast is more of a kind of lecture format as opposed to Q&A because Michael has a lot of good stuff to deliver and I hope we can cover where this 7th edition is coming from and where the changes are and may be kind of a good way of explaining what our audience needs to know in order to implement the 7th edition. So I hope this is a good enough introduction Michael. MC -where would you like to start PW – How did you get involved ? Essentially the RICS, as I’m sure you are aware, is currently spilt into a number of faculties that includes Building surveying, land surveying, quantity surveying etc.  now I can’t claim to know anything about the inner workings of the RICS suffice to say that I think each faculty head takes a certain responsibility for ensuring guidance is kept up to date and to do this they select a team, of advisors from the relevant area of the profession and I happen to be on the RICS boundaries and party wall panel which comes under the faculty of Land surveying. So It was decided essentially by the panel dare I say it on the advice of myself and another practising party wall surveyor that we should consider a revision to the 6th edition of the RICS guidance note following a little bit of online criticism and some relevant criticism of the old guide.  The changes being borne mostly out of commentary on case law, and so I was tasked along with Andrew to form a working group to essentially rework the guide and see if it needed any adjustments and for want of a better description this is where it started. PW – and how long did this take? I would say 15 months or so from start to finish, so once we formed the working group, we set an agenda of trying to meet once a month and we initially put in 8 meetings in the hope that it would be enough but it proved it wasn’t going to be enough!  It took about 15 meetings in the end, but once the new working party had been formed and got together we sub divided some tasks and went away in smaller groups and came back with our small group conclusions on certain things but, on the whole we sat on the whole we sat in somebody’s office for 4 hours at a time and went through the old guide page by page and comment by comment and added in a few things of our own, you will notice that there is a new draft party wall award at the back m

4. 

   20 Dec 2018

   An interview with Shirley Waldron

   In this episode, Shirley Waldron of Delva Patman Redler talks about her work with Crossrail and how the Crossrail Act affected the application of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996. Shirley also gives her views on the effectiveness of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996, its failings and what kind of amendments could be put forward and her opinion on whether all leaseholders are entitled to service of notice for works under section 6 of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Hi and welcome to another edition of Party Wall PRO the Podcast. I’ve got Shirley Waldron with me today from Delva Patman Redler. Shirley has a bit of a different background which is quite interesting. She’s an architect from training and got sucked into the party wall world. Shirley, welcome. Thanks for joining us. So let’s get into how you ended up there from being a chartered architect and then party wall. Shirley: Yes. OK. Well, I had wanted to do architecture from a very young age. I think in that way, I was quite lucky because most of my friends didn’t know what they wanted to do. A lot of my fellow students didn’t know what they wanted to do and some people just kind of drifted into whichever career sort of took them in whichever direction. But I was very lucky I think in that I knew I wanted to do architecture from about age 11 or so like that. So every decision I made really took me in that direction which meant that I focused on the relevant A levels, and then got into architecture at university. I was at Brighton College for my A levels and in Brighton at the local polytechnic, they had the School of Architecture, which is now of course Brighton University. I was very lucky to have some very good lecturers and tutors there and it was great to do what I wanted to do. I stayed in Brighton to do my year out. I don’t know if everyone is aware but architecture is a seven-year course. You have a three-year degree course. You do a year in private practice or even in government practice. You go back to university to do a diploma and then you do a final year in practice and then you can do your part three. I did all my training in Brighton and I did my year out as well in Brighton and it was only when I finally got my diploma that I wanted to do something different and I went to live in Gilford and I worked for an architecture practice in Gilford. In fact I worked for all three at the time, Scott Brownrigg, Lewis and Hickey and Norman and Dawbarn and that was very interesting. I worked on some MOD projects, I worked on – for Scott Brownrigg – Terminal 2 Manchester Airport and just at that time, CAD was coming through and I was on one of the very first training programs in Cambridge. The training course was a week long actually, and it was done by McDonnell Douglas, the aircraft manufacturers, the engineers and they were on this course which was GDS and it was actually a very impressive tool, which then subsequently became Micro GDS and there were various other offshoots to that, Auto CAD, et cetera, and it kind of took on a life of its own. But yes, I was one of the very first people to train as a CAD technician as a qualified architect. I did that for years actually. I had a stint in Singapore where I worked for a firm of architects and that was by choice. I went to live in Singapore for three years and I did architecture there and I then stopped doing architecture because I was having too much fun and I decided I was going to teach English and I did that. I taught English to mostly Japanese students. But doing that meant I could dictate my own terms really and my own calendar. It kind of freed me up. I ran my own business there basically, teaching English to mostly Japanese students, which was quite an eye-opener. Actually it was a great place to live. Everything worked. It was very clean and everything functioned and yet it was all in the middle of the most amazing travel opportunities to Indonesi

5. 

   15 Oct 2018

   Q&A session with Stuart Birrell

   In this episode, Stuart Birrell talks about party wall fees, good practices, training for Party Wall surveyors and much more. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Hi, hi and welcome to another edition of Party Wall Pro Podcast and today I’m very excited to have Stuart Birrell with me from Murray Birrell. He’s a Fellow of the RICS and 40 years into the job, if I’m not mistaken. You are also a member of the London Committee of the Pyramus & Thisbe Club. We have a few questions that our audience have sent through that we’re going to go through. But before we start, Stuart Birrell, how did you get to where you are? Give us a bit of background of where you come from and how you ended up here? Stuart: It’s a long story. It’s 43 years now incidentally. I got into surveying by complete accident. I left school, had enough of education, worked on building sites and hurt my back. I went to what used to be called the employment office to sign on and they told me, “You can’t sign on until you’ve applied for jobs.” I had been on a course with John Lane when I was at school. So I said, “Quantity Surveyor” and they said: “do you want to be a quantity surveyor”. “No, I don’t. But you asked me to put a name down, so I have. Went for a couple of interviews, didn’t like them and I eventually ended up having an interview with somebody called a building surveyor, which I had never actually heard of. And I quite like technical drawing and is what you did in those days when you started. So I took the job and the rest is history really. That was in 1982. I became a fellow in 1995. Keith and I started our business 1992. So we’re 25 years old now. So yeah, it has been a long time. Philippe: Yeah, you’ve seen it all. So 25 years in the business. How is it going? Stuart: Yes, it’s doing OK. We’ve grown organically. We’ve never been great businessmen. We’re suppliers basically. But we’ve done OK. We’re still talking to each other, which is amazing really. Philippe: Yes. So how did you meet Keith and decided to start a business together? Stuart: Well, yeah. We had virtually parallel careers. I met him at college in the late ’70s and we qualified on the same day. I got him a job where I was working at John Pellings at the time. We became senior surveyors on the same day and associates on the same day, partners on the same day and eventually we left on the same day. So it’s rather boring really. But yeah, met him a long, long time. Philippe: And from the general surveying into party wall – I’m not sure what the kind of ratio party wall to other general building surveyor work you’re doing at Murray Birrell. But how did you end up developing this specialism? Stuart: You’re looking for income streams running a business, within your skill set. It has to be within your skill set I think. Both of our history, we’re contract surveyors really. That’s what we grew up doing. Mainly maintenance and rehabilitation of existing buildings. You get involved in party walls when you’re doing it. So you start doing it. You learn a little bit. You work with people. You listen. You learn. 15, 20 years ago, it was probably a negligible part of our business. Now it’s about 22, 23 percent roughly and we do a lot of licenses to alter, we still do a lot of construction work. We do dilapidations. So we do most things that building surveyors do. But I sort of specialised to a greater degree over the last, last 10, 12 years I suppose really. Philippe: And enjoying it? Stuart: Yes, I do. It’s less confrontational than doing construction work. So it amuses me when people say, “Oh, you’re being really difficult.” You don’t know what difficult is.” People want to punch your head off in construction work… I do enjoy it. I do enjoy it. Philippe: Now that’s inter

6. 

   1 Sept 2018

   Q&A session with Andrew Schofield

   In this episode, Andrew Schofield gives his views, interpretations and opinion on invoking the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 without serving a notice; the scope of Section 7(2) compensation; rights and obligations in using drones for surveys; demystifying the old conflict between the Pyramus and Thisbe Club and the Faculty of Party Wall Surveyors. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Hi and welcome to another edition of Party Wall PRO the Podcast. Sorry it took me so long to get back online but we’ve been very busy with lots of new customers for our party wall software and also developing a software for schedule of condition that we’re going to release in a few months, which is quite exciting. I’m very excited today because I’ve got Andrew Schofield with me of Schofield Surveyors and he has agreed to come on the show because…you owe me one, right? Before we dig into the questions, because this time, it’s a little bit different. I actually went out to our community of users and our mailing list to ask people – to ask you questions directly and we had a ton of responses. So I’m not going to go through all of them but we will try to at least talk about the common themes that came through. But first of all Andrew, how did you get to where you are? How did you end up doing Party Wall and neighbourly matters? Andrew: A bit of check on my background. Not a very nice boy at school. Went to sea when I was 16. Spent eight years in the merchant navy, went everywhere, had a thoroughly good time. I met lots of people, some with negotiable affection and well, I met a girl, came to shore, bummed around. Sold brushes door to door, worked at pubs, security guard and then one day I walked past the estate agents where I’d recently bought this flat and I had a young barrister sleeping on the floor to help pay the rent and I walked in to get a job and like the Boys from the Blackstuff – and started off as an estate agent. Did about 12 months of that and then decided I want to be an auctioneer. How to be an auctioneer? You’ve got to a chartered surveyor. Didn’t know any of this of course. Then I met an awesome building surveyor by the way, Mike Rutherford. He’s just brilliant and he – learned with him and went on to Brittain Hadley, partnership, then Conrad Ritblat, as it was in the day, as a senior. Then I signed at another practice for about 10 years10 years, went to Delva Patman where I was a partner and was there for nearly 10 years I think. And then I thought why not try and regain a bit of high ground. I felt that building surveying generally, the standards have dropped – I think the RICS, since the labour reform has changed a lot and I wanted to start something that’s a bit different, also on a different structure to a practice rather than having – I believe very much employee owned so everyone has vested interest in business and it’s a very transparent organisation as much as the people ask a question about – for example, what I earn and I answer it and there’s no hidden secrets about this. We’ve got a business plan to build it up to a certain size and structure it for longevity and it’s not for me, the practice really, I’ve already made the decision. When I’m 65, I resign as a director and they can keep me on as a consultant if they’re not sick of me by then. That’s basically it. It’s a bit of a swan song try to get a high ground, a bit more moral, a bit more – as I say, try and get back to the genuine core interests of construction and the inquiring mind that that requires. Philippe: So what’s the grand plan? Because I’ve seen you’ve managed to poach some young talent. Andrew: Poach? Poach? I am so hurt by that comment – these people came to me! They are – I’m really lucky, I’ve got the finest surveyors available really who are great. Yeah, they’re awesome. I mean they’re a lot better than I am. Everything we’ve – obviously Jack is a tour de force. He’s now a mediator with everything that goes with it. a

7. 

   10 Aug 2017

   Stick with what you know; know what you know; know what you don’t know; and know where to find the answer

   In this episode, Michael Cooper, Director and Head of Neighbourly Matters at Colliers International tells us what you need to know and where to find your answers. He tells us the frustrations of party walls and what happens after the award… You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Hi and welcome to another edition of Party Wall PRO the Podcast. I’m very excited to have Michael Cooper with us today. Michael is currently a Director and Head of Neighbourly Matters at Colliers International with offices around the country. Before that, Michael, you were with CBRE and Savills. He has over 25 years of experience and his knowledge is sought by many, including the RICS, who asked him to co-write the latest guidance notes for party walls. He is now also a London committee member of the Pyramus & Thisbe Club, if I’m not mistaken. Michael: That’s correct. Philippe: Welcome to the show, Michael. Very excited to have you here. So from your short bio, I see you’ve only worked with monsters. Colliers International, CBRE, Savills. Is that how you started? Michael: No. Interestingly, I started post A levels. I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life and I joined a very small practice of surveyors as an architectural technician and this was through an introduction from my father who was a civil engineer and suggested that the construction industry might be a path to follow. So that was where I started off. Philippe: And from there? Michael: From there, I realised that this was a good career path and building surveying at the time was very sought-after professionally because there were very few surveyors around. I think there still aren’t to a certain extent. Then I went back to university. I got a degree and I got very interested in party wall surveying during that degree of course, and fell out the other end and joined a very small practice and started specialising in party walls, long before I moved on to the big corporate organisations that you mentioned. So it was through choice that I went into party walls as a specialism. But I did spend a couple of years with other organisations, learning general surveying and then got moving along to get chartered. Philippe: So from very early on, you were interested in party wall. That’s quite interesting because normally people don’t kind of tend to fall into it whereas that was your path. So it would be interesting to know the difference working with the Goliaths of this world as opposed to the smaller practices and what are the kind of pros and cons? Michael: Well, I think there are advantages to both. My suggestion is though that when, in party walls in particular, we come across a wide range of clients and from small residential development straight the way up to large commercial developments. But the approach dictated by the legislation itself is one of consistency. So it doesn’t matter if it’s a large project or small project. The difference between working for a large organisation versus a small organisation, I think there are advantages to both. In a larger organisation, the pool of resources and knowledge is more readily available particularly in-house and that’s very useful even as a party wall surveyor. We often come across things that we’re not familiar with and we use other professionals to advise us in the administration of the Party Wall Etc. Act 1996. I think it’s quite advantageous to have those professionals sitting near you or nearby, that you can rely upon for that type of support. In a smaller organisation, you’ve obviously got to go looking for that type of information. It doesn’t mean to say it’s not available but it’s less readily available, should I say. But of course there’s also the disadvantages that come with a corporate structure and probably having to understand more internal law and how that affects your business on a day to day basis. It introduces an element for red tape. But I think from my own view, having worked in bo

8. 

   27 Jun 2017

   How to promote yourself in a saturated party wall market, with Leo Scarborough

   Leo Scarborough gives us his views on the state of the party wall services market and how to build a party wall practice in a competitive environment. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Hi and welcome to another edition of our podcast. I’ve got Leo Scarborough with me, founder of Surveyo.co.uk I’ve been in touch with him for some time now. Good guy. So really, really excited to have him on today. Leo, welcome. Leo: Thank you. Philippe: So just tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you start in the surveying business? Leo: Good question. Father’s advice. My father has been a massive influence on me. He’s a floor layer by trade and I wasn’t particularly a great performer at school, got my GCSEs didn’t get too much in the way of A levels and started out on a career path in the restaurant business. I was a barman, wanted to follow my dad into floor laying and he just dissuaded me. He let me do a few hours, a few days with him, kept me on for a bit and then sat me down and said, “You got to back up your ideas, son.” The barman job was great. It was a great payer at the time, at the age of eighteen it must have been and there’s kind of a ceiling to it. The ceiling is the amount you can earn. So sat me down and said it’s time to get re-educated. So having left school with little to no A levels, I’d spent a year in the industry doing bits and pieces. He got me work experiences with various numbers of his contacts and I started life then as a quantity surveyor. I got myself on a course first. On a part-time course and then found myself a job, the hardest way possible actually. 100 CVs, three interviews, one job offer and that’s where I started. So yes, started up as a quantity surveyor and soon realised quantity surveying wasn’t really where my passion lied and ended up as a building surveyor in a multi-disciplinary practice. It was quite a small practice, so I couldn’t get lost in the conglomerate of big companies. Not for everybody. It worked for me. But had to learn pretty fast and got started to take on various complex and senior roles from an early age and it really did kind of spur me to pick things up quite quickly. Philippe: That’s the advantage of being in a smaller firm, right? You’ve got responsibilities at a much earlier stage. Leo: Nowhere to hide as well. My boss was a really supportive man. He really lead me down that direction. He never pushed me but the work ethic that I adopted was certainly to push myself, to push myself as much as possible. He allowed me to do it. There were some really rookie mistakes I made in the early days. But actually he allowed me to make them and then, in a very professional way, came and scooped up the pieces, reset me, and allowed me to go off again, having learned my lesson. Philippe: How and when did you decide to do it alone? Leo: Well, good question. The actual decision and I always knew probably from when I started my career, maybe within 12 to 18 months, that I was going to be self-employed at one point. It wasn’t a rebellious thing against the hierarchy. It wasn’t the fact that I wasn’t getting supported. It was just a need to be able to prove myself. It was a need to have the potential to earn more. Money is not a driver for me. My family is. So again, a driver from when I was a young boy was always to have a family. Actually you start to add things together. The driver for me at a young age was to have a family and you start to put things together. You say, well, I want a family. I’ve got to buy a house. To buy a house, you’ve got to have a deposit. I’ve got to earn this plus live. Actually, it’s a very simple element of math. I need a house in this area that costs this much. I need a deposit of this much. I have to earn, et cetera, et cetera. So with all of that, I knew I had to be self-employed at some stage because the ceiling on an employed person wouldn’t give me the lifestyle I wanted. I’m not saying that’s all about money. For me,

9. 

   19 Feb 2017

   How to build a practice with no cold calling, no cold emailing or active marketing

   Jack Norton tells us how he joined Andrew Schofield to build a new firm that is rapidly growing. His recipe to exponential growth? Simple: never say no to a networking event or CPD session. You can also watch the interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Welcome to another episode of Party Wall PRO, the podcast. I’ve got Jack Norton with me today and Jack Norton is a director at a relatively new firm called Schofield Surveyors, started by the famous Andrew Schofield and you are specialising in party wall, rights of lights, general neighbourly matters, right? Jack: Yes, that’s it, neighbourly matters. Philippe: So tell me, how easy or difficult was it for you to make that jump, to start a new firm like that with Andrew? Jack: I was very lucky because I worked with Andrew at Delva Patman Redler when he left. It was May last year. He set the firm up, which started trading in June and I joined Andy later in the year, end of October. He is a thoroughly experienced surveyor with a very good following of clients and surveyors. So for me, I’m a lot younger than Andrew, it was relatively straightforward because of Andrew’s contacts. So he really carried us through the first few months. My contact base is much smaller than Andy’s. The first few months were slightly worrying because all of a sudden you have two surveyors to feed, working off one surveyor’s workload. By the beginning of 2016, work really picked up and, eight or nine weeks ago, we employed a new surveyor. So there are now three of us. So, we’ve built the way we wished to. Philippe: What’s the long term goal there? Is it to continue recruiting and growing the practice? Jack: Yes, we would love to grow the practice. The ethos is that ,first and foremost we are building surveyors and we’re building surveyors that might specialise in doing some party wall work. But we are building surveyors first. So we don’t just deal with the application of The Party Wall etc. Act 1996, we deal with associated neighbourly matters. We do building surveys, dilapidations, mixed with expert witness work on party wall. Also party wall projects gone wrong, boundary disputes and general construction disputes. So in relation to the staff we employ, we wish them to share the same ethos. No doubt we will continue to do a lot of party wall work. Philippe: So for you Jack, personally, how did you get into this? How did you decide to become a surveyor and then specialise. Jack: I had a bit of a false start. I went to university to do naval architecture and realised that wasn’t the career for me. So I dropped out of university the first time and got paid to go sailing for a bit and the classic: “I have an uncle who’s a building surveyor with a practice down in Sussex” happened. So I did a bit of work experience with him, enjoyed my time there and then went to Reading to do a building surveying degree. From there, I went into a very good firm of surveyors Daniel Watney, who are a multidisciplinary firm but have a very strong building surveying department. I got chartered there and then moved to Delva Patman Redler and I am where I am now. Philippe: Delva Patman Redler is a niche firm. What made you decide to go for that particular niche? Jack: I had a broad spread of everything at Daniel Watney and I particularly enjoyed what are deemed professional aspects of surveying i.e. dilapidations, party wall act work. But I had done nothing on rights of light and boundary disputes. Personally, I didn’t really enjoy contracts administration work. So it was an opportunity when Andy and Alastair offered me a job to step away from the contract admin and learn some things from some very reputable surveyors. That’s how I stepped into that professional side of work, which was exactly what I was after. Philippe: So do you remember your first client? Jack: First client? Yes. I was at Daniel Watney. It was in relation to a contracts administration job actually. It was acting for a trust, in Wimbledon – I was pick

10. 

    9 Dec 2016

    The evolution of party wall surveying with Nicky Major

    Nicky Major, our first female guest, tells us how she became a Fellow of RICS, how party wall surveying has changed over the past five years and how consistency is key to building a party wall practice. You can also watch this interview on YouTube. Transcription Philippe: Welcome to another episode of Party Wall PRO the podcast. I’m very excited to have Nicky Major with me, my first female guest. Very exciting. And, so yeah, Nicky Major, one of the equity partners at Scott Davidson who started her career 20 years ago in Dorset, before coming up to London about, what, 12 years ago? Nicky’s practice focuses on high-end residential and was recently elected as a fellow of the RICS. So how does that feel? Nicky: It feels great. It feels really good. I mean as you have alluded to there are not many female building surveyors which is my profession as well as a party wall surveyor, and there aren’t as many female surveyors out there and to be elected as a fellow, for me, personally I feel tremendous. It’s fantastic. And it’s a lot of hard work and… but I’m glad I did it. And not only just to feel good in myself but to show a lot of male surveyors out there that actually women can do it. So, I’m quite chuffed with myself. Philippe: When you say hard work, how, what do you actually need, sorry… my ignorance, but what do you need to do to in order to be elected as a fellow? Nicky: They recently changed application beginning of last year, so I was on the cusp of the new type but generally what you have to do is you have to prove, I think it’s 5 subjects out of (they give you list) of 20. And so you pick your 5. And obviously I specialize in residential high-end party wall matters and I also run my own practice, so I can pick the 5 subject matters. So what you have to do you have to write an… only 800 words about particular subject matter and… which is quite difficult when you got to squeeze every pertinent issue in there. And then you have to get a client or a colleague to say yes, that’s true and she’s not lying and I can verify that. So that’s what you have to do. It’s quite difficult because of course you have to find people who can verify that and choose them wisely so I chose couple of fellows and that’s what we have to do. It sounds easy but it’s not. It’s quite difficult. Philippe: Well, congratulations! Nicky: Thank you very much. Thank you Philippe: One of the few women in the industry Nicky: Yes Philippe: How did you decide to become a surveyor? How did you end up going into that line of work? Nicky: Well, it wasn’t a decision, actually. It was so, very briefly I did a very random selection of A Levels, as you do. I didn’t have any clue as to what I wanted to do at school. We didn’t really have great advice so I did random set of A Levels and I had no idea what to do. Rather than go do a 4-year degree in something I didn’t really know what I wanted to do I thought I’d stay home and do a little HND and as part of that I had to do work experience of whatever subject that I chose and was literally a case of opening a prospectus of a polytechnic as they work back then. Finger in the air “I’ll do that course” and I happened to fall on building studies. As part of that, like I said, I had to do work experience and a friend of a friend of a friend worked in a surveying practice and said come do some work experience with me. So I did. It happened at the right place at right time. The assistant building surveyor at the time had left. I was thoroughly enjoying my work experience and they offered me a position on the basis I did my building surveying degree by web distance learning. And thereafter become chartered so that’s what I did. I mean back then, building surveying was not that common so only a few polytechnics did the course and living in Bournemouth, the nearest polytechnic believe it or not was London. So I didn’t actually want to commute daily to London. Oh, it wouldn’t be daily sorry, it would have twice a week. And, so I did

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