A History of the First Twenty Years

My involvement with Rand Associates goes back to the first day of its creation in January 1975. Rand was formed as a successor organisation to a quantity surveying firm called Guthrie Rand, a partnership between John Guthrie and Alan Rand. I had been seconded to Guthrie Rand in a senior role from Guthrie and Partners on a part-time basis.

Before January 1975, I divided my time between two roles. One was as project quantity surveyor on the multi-million-pound town centre redevelopment in Birkenhead, where I had first met Alan Rand. The other was as managing surveyor for Guthrie Rand in London. This dual involvement partly explains why Rand historically has had offices in Birkenhead, Wirral and Reigate, Surrey.

Due to a shift in direction, Guthrie Rand split into two entities: Consul Planning and Rand Associates. I was offered a choice – either stay with Guthrie and Partners in a full-time capacity on the Birkenhead redevelopment or become an Associate Partner in Alan Rand’s new firm. Despite the extra travel and time away from home, the decision was a no-brainer. I had been involved in the Birkenhead project since the first spade went into the ground in September 1969, but I wanted new challenges, and Rand Associates offered exactly that.

During a meeting in London with the client’s senior management, I was nominated to travel to Sudan to research labour, material and plant costs and availability. I then continued to Kuwait to report my findings. The arduous journey via Cairo was an experience I vowed never to repeat. One vivid memory of that trip was of Richard Holliday and I trying to explain the sequencing of major earthwork excavations to one of the client’s directors. He left the boardroom and returned with several model excavators given to him by Caterpillar plant company, and we used those to “play out” the construction sequence.

In 1976, our Dutch client Ballast Nedam asked Rand to price and quantify a tender for a water towers contract in Riyadh. This involved taking off all quantities for excavation, concrete, rebar, formwork, etc. It was the first of many such assignments over the next 25 years, involving staff in the UK, Holland, and the Middle and Far East.

In 1977 Alan Rand gave the first indication of an intention to retire in two years time, and I was invited in conjunction with Derek Oldham to purchase the firm from him, the new partnership came into being in April 1979. One of the consequences of the discussions in 1977, was that Pam and I with our family moved down from the Wirral to Crawley Down to facilitate running the Reigate Office.

In 1981, Derek and I were joined by Richard Holliday and Ted Whittaker (who sadly passed away in 1991) as partners. Later, Barry Patient became an Associate Partner.

Over the next 14 years, Derek and I developed bespoke Schedules of Rates for over 80 Local Authorities. We supported implementation through procurement documentation, bonus schemes, operational reviews, and more.

One of the outcomes of that work was that in 1984, Rand was invited to participate in a major review of the Direct Labour Organisation (DLO) of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. This took place at the height of the troubles, and the assignment was scheduled to last six months, based in Belfast. Understandably, my small team approached the task with some trepidation as we boarded our first flight. During this initial assignment, we encountered only one incident where we felt in danger, when visiting a couple of DLO depots near the border with the Eire when we were stopped at gunpoint by an army patrol.

This was the first of many visits to Northern Ireland working with the Housing Executive and in 1990/91 I was asked to develop a Schedule of Rates and performance related for the DLO operation.

In the mid 1980’s Rand were invited to undertake large scale stock condition surveys and develop programmes of planned maintenance, this was before computers, although we did use word processors for the Schedule of Rates production, and I can remember seeing Barry Patient with a roll of drawing paper, mapping out the results of the initial Surveys.

By the late 1980s, Rand had evolved from being strictly Quantity Surveyors to combining Quantity and Building Surveying expertise. We increasingly supported Local Authorities seeking to transfer housing stock to Housing Associations. I ended up project managing surveys across the South East and South West, even setting up a small office in Wells, Somerset. Many of those transfers led to the formation of organisations that would become part of Sovereign, Clarion, GreenSquare, and Aster.

In 1993, Nick Wood of West Berkshire Housing Association (formerly Newbury District Council) approached Rand about updating a Schedule of Rates originally developed for another client. The goal was to modernise the pricing, expand the content, and reformat it for a new housing management system.

That brief grew to cover the needs of eight Housing Associations within the NHF Hammar South West group. Richard Holliday and I worked closely with their representatives. We drafted content, received feedback, made amendments, and eventually delivered a Schedule of Rates covering 10 trade sections. Each Association could tailor the document to its own requirements.

Interest in the NHF Schedule of Rates had been steadily building through the Hammar Group, prompting the decision to formally launch it at the NHF Asset Management and Maintenance Conference and Exhibition, held at UMIST in Manchester in 1994. The exhibition officially opened at 9:00 PM on the Monday evening, and such was the enthusiasm from delegates that we were still demonstrating the product at 2:30 AM. This remarkable level of engagement clearly reflected the strong interest in its potential adoption by other Associations.

Over the 31 years since its launch, the NHF Schedule of Rates has:
– Grown from 8 users to over 620 at its peak (now with 580 registered subscribers following various mergers)
– Developed multiple modules covering all aspects of maintenance and improvement
– Created industry-specific Forms of Contract
– Developed technical specifications and model procurement documentation
– Reached its 8th version
– Led to the formation of a steering committee that became the National Housing Maintenance Forum and its offshoot, the Service Provider Forum
– Helped create a procurement consortium, Procurement for All Ltd, with 21 housing association members
– Underpinned NHMF Frameworx, a not for profit procurement organisation with sector low rebate fees.