KMCS will be involved in delivering a number of high profile projects in the next 18 months, including the new Lansdowne Road stadium, writes Ella Shanahan

KMCS construction and property consultants is engaged to provide project management, quantity surveying and other development-related services to projects valued over €1 billion in the next 18 months.

As project managers and quantity surveyors, it provides "turnkey supervision of the design team and the client from inception to handover" on a given project says Nigel Spence, managing partner in the Dublin firm. It also supervises the time-frame and costs.

Spence says: "It's capturing the design capabilities and design imagination of the architects, combined with the structural requirements of the building. In a lot of cases, we are appointed as a single point of contact. We reassemble the jigsaw puzzle."

Projects recently completed include the new Area 14 check-in facility at Dublin Airport; the new Golfing Union of Ireland headquarters and golfing academy at the Carton Demesne in Co Kildare; the Beacon Hospital in Sandyford, Dublin; and the Clarion Hotel and City Quarter development in Cork; and ongoing is the provision of a design and cost supervision service for the Irish Prison Service.

But upcoming are a number of really high-profile projects including: the €365 million development of Lansdowne Road stadium (as part of a consortium); the Howard Holdings docklands regeneration in Cork; the expansion programme for Primark Ireland; and Pier A and D central immigration at Dublin Airport.

"Quantity surveying is one of the oldest professions in the world," Nigel Spence says. "But we've brought quantity surveying into the 21st century. One time, quantity surveyors were little old men in dusty offices counting bricks. Now it's a much more sophisticated profession. Quantity surveyors would often be the lead in the classical design team. The average client is more interested in cost and time than an award. The quantity surveyor is the obvious animal to become the project manager in that situation." Anything but a little old man from a dusty office, Spence, a young fortysomething Dubliner who joined the company from school, adds: "We act as the interface between the client on one side - lots of clients don't have very sophisticated internal structures - and as translators between the client side and the technical construction and design team to ensure, if the client sets a brief at the start, that it is delivered."

The cost to the client varies depending on the services provided. For combined project management and quantity surveying, the fee is in the region of 2-2.5 per cent.

Spence says: "We work on the principle that we should be able to save the client the cost of that. We pay for ourselves. An average project could go over budget 5-7 per cent because of the vagaries of the construction industry. Good project managers should be able to save you a significant pool of that."

Since he started his quantity surveying training in Bolton Street - while already working - Spence has seen many changes in the commercial development sector but notes that it remains largely Irish-controlled.

"For Lansdowne Road, there were only inquiries from one or two European companies and they have all fallen away. The labour force is certainly very mixed: Eastern European and the old Russian states make up the labour force. There are a lot of Polish engineers and architects. This industry couldn't have coped with the swell of business but for the influx of people."

The most exciting project on his radar currently is the 23-hectare South Docks development in Cork, a joint venture between Howard Holdings and Tedcastles. KMCS is involved right up to the planning process. Planning should be lodged in September; development should commence in 2008; and a meaningful development should be in place by 2010-2011.

Spence says: "It's mixed-use - commercial, retail, leisure, residential - with a marina included. It's bigger than the IFSC."

KMCS employs 60 specialist staff, many with several languages, in two offices in Dublin and in satellites in London and Cork.

It tends to work from the same database of clients throughout the organisation and thus expand: for example, it intends to travel with Primark (owners of Penneys) as they expand through Europe; already they are doing bank monitoring, tracking money for their overseas investors as they invest in other countries. And KMCS intend to continue working with Gucci and Armani, as they have done in the past "even though it doesn't get us the suits any cheaper".

And Spence is not a developer himself. "I don't think you could realistically advise a client independently if you were looking at it through rose-tinted glasses. They value the independence of our advice - that is what they are rewarding us for."