The architecture firm co-owned by Hugh Wallace, a judge on RTÉ’s popular Home of the Year TV show, has “bounced back” from the pandemic impact and is on course to increase fee revenues to €2 million this year.
Mr Wallace said “we have bounced back. We have super clients, but it has taken time to recover from the Covid-19 impact.”
A director at Douglas Wallace Consultants Ltd, Mr Wallace said he expected revenues this year “will be back to pre-Covid levels and a bit higher”.
Mr Wallace said the projected revenues of €2 million for 2023 compare with income of €1.2 million and €800,000 during the two years before the Covid-19 hit.
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Mr Wallace recalled that for “Paddy’s Day in 2020 half our business was gone on the Tuesday morning. The hotel industry had collapsed and 50 per cent of our work was with hotels.”
Mr Wallace, who has written columns for The Irish Times, said the hotel business had since all come back. With the uplift in business, Mr Wallace said staff numbers should be up to 25 over the next year from 22 at present.
“We managed the business exceptionally well during Covid and we managed to hold on to our core staff,” he said. “We have driven the business as soon as the market changed and we are reaping the rewards. I have really enjoyed the work since March of last year.”
Mr Wallace was commenting on new accounts for Douglas Wallace Consultants Ltd showing that profits increased by 28 per cent to €81,745 in the 12 months to the end of June last year compared with a surplus of €63,733 for the prior year.
The firm last year paid out dividends of €53,936 and had accumulated profits of €446,477 at the end of June last.
Mr Wallace said the firm’s “big project” was Harcourt Developments’ Waterford North Quays development, which he expected to go to planning in the third quarter of this year.
Mr Wallace said some of its projects were “stuck in the planning system”. “We have commercial projects waiting 18 months at An Bord Pleanála for a decision. Overseas investors are looking at you thinking you are stupid and asking why can’t you deliver planning. Why would you invest here when you are waiting three-four years and you can go to another country and it takes you a year?”
