In December 2017 I joined Laura Ruxton as joint owner & Director of Dunwoodie Architects. At the time I was running my own business & prior to that I was a Director at Dewjoc Architects. Laura was looking for a business partner to help her run the Practice so it seemed to make perfect sense for us to get together.
Dunwoodie had been operating successfully in the architectural healthcare field for almost 30 years & had built up a very strong presence in this niche area, working for all the local NHS Trusts. Whilst the business did operate in other sectors the majority of commissions were in healthcare where it built an excellent reputation.
On the other hand, I had worked predominantly in the commercial & retail sectors for over 30 years so it made perfect sense for Laura & I to get together to maximise opportunities in both sectors & extend our reach & combined client base. To date we have had great success, having been in business together less than three years. In that short time we have been responsible for the STACK developments in both Newcastle & Seaburn, worked on an £80m outpatients department in Malta, the new £18m RVI multi-storey car park which is currently on site, & we also have a number of retail schemes, further STACK developments, care home & healthcare projects in the pipeline.
Clearly, this has not been the most ‘normal’ of years & it would disingenuous to say that projects haven’t been affected by Covid 19 because they definitely have, whether that be due to delays in supply chains or an inability to source products & materials when projects are on site or due to healthcare projects being put on hold as facilities & resources are redirected to help deal with the pandemic. The availability of finance to fund commercial projects now & moving forward is also a potential issue that may impact on businesses such as ourselves in the future as we edge out of the pandemic but time will tell. I have to say though that whilst we have been working away from the office and particularly when we have had projects on site, our team have responded magnificently. The key here is communication & I can safely say that it has been first class.
As part of the (r)evolution of the Practice we have decided to carry out a rebranding exercise. Having discussed this on an ongoing basis, we have decided to keep the Practice name as it is so well known in healthcare circles both locally & nationally.
It never ceases to surprise us when dealing with people in other parts of the country that they have heard the Practice name in healthcare circles. Whilst keeping the name, at the same time we are also promoting an abridged version ie DWA, as we are finding people seem to be naturally addressing us that way in documentation and we feel it gives us a shorter, snappier, more contemporary feel whilst maintaining the historic links of the business. Also, we have deliberately used a selection of colours, which some people may think weakens a brand, but we feel, having been through this process more than once, there are no hard and fast rules. Our view is that there are now many strands to our business which perhaps weren’t there previously but are now strongly represented by the variety of colours. Maybe we will change this in time but for the moment we want to make it very apparent that change is taking place at pace at DWA. Hopefully you will agree!
