Covid and the role of home working in a small business - By Elizabeth Hewitt, Director of Marketing at Iconic Project Management Limited

A new, optimistic business in UK construction who specialise in retail, leisure and commercial construction

It’s fair to say that the last couple of years have been a rollercoaster for Iconic Project Management. Founded in 2018, we are a small, family run consultancy practice who provide project management for construction projects across the retail, leisure, hospitality and commercial sectors. Our whole team have always worked remotely so we were ready to continue working from home when the first lockdown was announced. However, nobody could have predicted exactly what the impact of the pandemic would be, and it has led to us making some major changes to the way we do business. At last, we are looking forward to playing our full part in a resurgent UK construction industry.

When we established our business in July 2018, our model was to hire project managers on contract, as and when we needed them. This worked well for us because we had an established network of strategic partners we could call on; reliable and trusted people we had worked with before. It gave us the flexibility to react to the ebb and flow of our clients’ requirements.

Our team of project managers all worked remotely, either from home or from the client’s premises. Not only did this save us money on office space, but it meant that we weren’t tied to a physical location. We had the freedom to be able to service all parts of the UK equally.

Our business model was serving us well. By January 2020, Iconic Project Management had a full order book for the year ahead. We were delighted that our new company had made such a promising start. We were confident about our future. So much so that we started making plans to expand the business, by recruiting some more permanent members of staff.

We planned to recruit a new, permanent, project manager. This would give us capacity to be able to take on new projects at much shorter notice. It would also enable us to take the occasional holiday! Plus, it was our intention to begin recruitment for a degree apprenticeship scheme. This was a project we were particularly passionate about.

Clouds on the horizon

By coincidence, all our existing projects were scheduled to finish in late February 2020, with a series of new projects slated to start from mid-March. We had been looking forward to this short break between projects. Then as we went into March, COVID-19 began to feel like a real threat. One by one, our projects were put on hold while we all waited to see what would happen.

In hindsight, we were very fortunate that the pandemic hit just at the same moment we were between projects. That meant that we did not have any contractors on our books. We had been waiting for one of the projects due to start in March to get going before we began recruitment for our permanent employees.

Initially, our clients all assured us that the planned projects would still be going ahead. We just had to hold tight for a little while. Luckily, we had built up enough equity in our business to keep us going for six months, if need be. We had always worked from home and so we didn’t need to pay rent on business premises. Consequently, we weren’t particularly worried when the first lockdown was announced. We knew we were fortunate in our circumstances and so we decided to embrace the unexpected time off, enjoying the company of our teenage children who suddenly had nowhere else to go.

Boom to bust

As the weeks at home turned into months, it became apparent that none of our projects were going to be starting any time soon. All of the planned projects were internal works for clients who were now worried about social distancing, quite rightly. One client used the lockdown as an opportunity to restructure their business. This mean that the programme of improvements to their retail properties was no longer a priority. Another client’s business was so negatively impacted by the lockdown that their planned works were no longer financially viable. Another client found that their entire workforce was working so successfully from home that, not only did they no longer need to refurbish their offices, they might get rid of their premises altogether.

By the summer of 2020, we had effectively mothballed Iconic Project Management. Funds were starting to dwindle and there was no work on the horizon. We were forced to look for other employment. We were devastated that our business had gone from boom to bust in such a short space of time and through no fault of our own.

Not giving up

In the run up to Christmas 2020, we took stock of the situation. We were determined not to give up on our vision. We truly believed that Iconic Project Management had something special to offer our clients, so we decided to go all out to resurrect our business. The enforced time away gave us the space to consider how we wanted our business to look in the future. We decided to make some changes to build ourselves back up again.

We re-focused our efforts onto marketing in order to bring in new leads. Whereas we previously relied on word-of-mouth recommendations to bring in new business, we stepped up our use of social media to engage with a new audience.

We needed to be ready to get to work as soon as our clients need us, so we pressed ahead with our recruitment plans. We are currently advertising for an assistant project manager. He or she will give us the capacity to get started on new commissions immediately, without having to wait for contractors to become available. We will still augment our workforce with contractors but we will no longer be solely reliant on them.

Evolving our home working model

Month after month of conducting business entirely remotely has made us realise that permanently working from home can’t be our only way of working. Our experience is that it is much harder to build rapport with people you have never met in real life. It takes more time for a team to gel. Team members who are struggling, or who are just a bit quieter, can disappear from view. With this in mind, we have started searching for suitable office space. We are hoping to move in before our new assistant project manager joins us. We still plan to have working from home as one of the options available to us, but we are looking forward to forging our team, in person, in our new premises.

Bouncing back!

We are receiving new leads every week and it looks like we’ll be busier than ever by the summer. Best of all, that delayed project from March 2020 is finally about to start. After the ups and downs of the last year, we are finally feeling optimistic that we’ll bounce back stronger than we have ever been.

Website: https://www.iconicprojectmanagement.com