CONSTRUCTION
A decade of fine design Imagine an industry whereby all you produce, helped shape and are proud of is on show for all to see and enjoy – and your name is nowhere to be seen.
If architects Roberts Limbrick minds it does not show it. Like everyone in the sector of our economy concerned with construction, the Gloucester architects’ focus is on the detail, on the client, on the margins, on the job in hand and on the pipeline of work. Shouting about yourself is a job for someone else. The Bruton Way-headquartered business has been spinning plates like this, in its expert way, for 10 years this year. Its collective business nous is informed by the difficult times – think 2008-2009 when the construction sector felt like it has stopped overnight post financial crash, and its skills span a spectrum from old-school people skills to the technical, digital. Roberts Limbrick was forged during that bleak recessionary period from two practices well-established within the county – Stephen Limbrick and Jeff Roberts’ city firms. A report from Construction Products Association (CPA) and Ernst & Young at the time confirmed the nation had built less houses that at any other time since 1924. Its commercial property was faring little better – with the CPA predicting a 24 per cent fall in 2009 and 19 per cent in 2010. But the marriage of the two businesses played to both of their strengths – one leaning more towards the private and commercial, one towards public.
If it did such a thing, Roberts Limbrick could lay claim to not only helping to shape some of the finest public and private buildings in our county, but across the region and intoWales. The economic difficulties of a decade ago may be long gone (2019 proving a busy time for the firm), but not everything returned to pre-recession levels and successful firms need to be supremely focussed. “The tolerances have got tighter and tighter,” said Joe Roberts, a director of Roberts Limbrick, who grew up in the county, did his training here and now leads from the front – in that modest, confident, capable way that could be said to personify the firm. “You have to have very experienced and able people that are technically competent.We are proud of not just
62 | February 2019 | www. punchline-gloucester .com
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