Meet the client: Damien Sharkey, MD of HUB – ADC

Can you tell us a bit about HUB? What makes it different from other developers?

HUB was established in 2012, with a focus on delivering housing for London’s mid-market. We have evolved since then, becoming experts at delivering BTR schemes, with a strong track record and a growing pipeline of regeneration projects in London and key cities across the country, totalling 6,000 homes, 350,000sqft m2 of commercial space and five public parks.

We place a strong emphasis on partnership, whether that’s with residents and communities, or contractors, funders, local authorities and other project partners – we pride ourselves on the fact that we build relationships before buildings.

Each of our projects is unique, but they share some key characteristics – all our schemes are in well-connected locations, with good quality public realm and we deliver a good proportion of affordable homes on site. Most importantly, we deliver all the projects we take on, even through the pandemic!

HUB is a progressive developer, we’re always looking for new and better ways of delivering our schemes.  With the climate crisis upon us, we are increasingly aware of the importance of ESG and have published an ESG framework. We have recently launched our HubCap initiative, which focuses on repurposing existing buildings and emerging living models. This initiative particularly will save considerable amounts of embodied carbon, but we’re endeavouring to reduce the embodied and operational carbon in all our schemes. All our upcoming projects are all-electric with the potential to be net zero operationally, as well as being very well insulated and energy efficient.

What made you decide to make the leap from practising architect to client?

 I spent five years working within an architectural practice on live projects. My interaction with developers during that time opened my eyes to the whole real estate development cycle. Design is a crucial part of that process, but I wanted to be part of the end-to-end process of acquiring sites, attracting funding, getting planning permission, and delivering projects.

What advice would you give to any other architects who are considering a move into development?

The skills architects have are valuable to development, including bringing a design-focussed lens to projects. However, development involves lots of other skills, and you need to be interested in the overall process, not just design. There are even more aspects than I realised when I made the move, and one of the crucial skills to being successful is an understanding of the commercial realities and viability – if it doesn’t make financial sense, it won’t work.

HUB purposefully recruits people from consulting backgrounds to our development team as we recognise that this diversity of skills, perspectives and experience allow projects to be managed in a unique way. We have four trained architects in the team already, alongside engineers, surveyors and planning experts.

A key thing to consider when making the move from architecture is choosing the right developer to work for. Look out for one that’s passionate about design, as well as patient and supportive of people from different backgrounds learning the ropes. I was fortunate to come to HUB, where the team already had a fundamental appreciation for design. They brought me on and let me do the parts of the job I was already good at, while providing a supportive environment to learn the rest.

What are the particular challenges involved in designing for the build-to-rent sector?

We see more opportunities than challenges in this sector. That’s part of our wider philosophy as a business to be progressive, and what allows us to keep pushing our boundaries with fresh thinking and problem solving.

There are a lot of things tenants now expect from a build-to-rent development as a minimum, like social and environmental sustainability considerations. While we’re already pushing ourselves to be as innovative and sustainable as possible, knowing there’s that expectation from the end-user holds us to account.

We’re seeing a shift in the demographic of BTR tenants to include a broader range of people in tandem with the evolution of the sector as a whole. Increasingly there are more families and older people that are down-sizing, alongside the young professionals. We see the private rented sector as first-generation BTR. Second-generation are the true BTR schemes we’ve completed over the past decade, and we see third-generation BTR as post-pandemic living.

Now people are looking for better amenity offerings to suit their lifestyle, so good quality shared spaces that can be used in flexible ways are more important than ever before and we’re able to get creative with delivering those. We’re also finding residents in these schemes are looking for a community in the building, and design that doesn’t turn its back on the external community but welcomes people in.

How much are renters, and by implication the rents you can achieve, driven by design quality and environmental performance?

Tenants are strongly driven by these considerations, and it’s an upward trend as BTR matures in the UK. As more BTR housing is completed, renters will choose the homes that are not only nice places to live, but that also have lower carbon impact. That’s two-fold – obviously the cost-of-living crisis means people are feeling the pinch when it comes to utility bills, but there’s also an onus on us to minimise operational carbon through design for the benefit of the planet.

In terms of design quality, renting is now a longer-term solution for many people and there’s increasingly less tolerance for subpar housing. High-quality finishes, functional design and thoughtful amenity spaces are the expectation. Early BTR focussed on amenities like high-end gyms kitted out with gear but now we’re seeing more demand for flexible spaces that can be used for everything from co-working to hosting gatherings and screening films.

This type of high quality, flexible amenity has been a big success with our Queen’s Quarter scheme in Croydon. People are using these spaces for living, working, entertaining. A BTR scheme isn’t just about housing, it’s increasingly about offering a holistic lifestyle, as well as a sense of community.

Would you say the regulatory and planning system is fit for purpose for the type of work that you do? If not, what changes would you like to see?

We’re in a period of huge legislative change, including fundamental changes to the Building Safety Bill. Challenges always present opportunities, and we see this as a way to keep pushing ourselves to deliver better homes that last longer. While much of this change is necessary, it is coming at a point where it’s already extremely challenging to make schemes viable and deliver housing on-time and on-budget with increasing construction costs.

However, it’s easy to criticise the planning system and blame it for fundamental issues. We feel there’s a responsibility on us as developers, alongside our partners, to work together with planning officials and local authorities to reach a viable outcome with approved consents we can be proud of.

That’s not to say I don’t think the current system needs improvements, which it does. We need a system with more certainty, that moves faster. ‘Time is money’ is a cliché, but there are real costs incurred from lost time – not just for us, but also for the end-user and the wider community. The quicker consents are approved, the faster we can break ground to deliver schemes and the lower the cost of a project as a whole, which means more affordable housing that can be included.

A question that will be of particular interest to our readership is how do you select your architects?

This will sound like a given, but our key requirement for selecting an architect is their ability to deliver buildings. We have a lot of architects in-house, which means we form an opinion pretty early on about what kind of architecture will be best for any given scheme. The architects we work with need to understand how to detail and deliver one of HUB’s buildings, alongside an ability to understand and respond to budgets – both financial and carbon. Any experience that can be demonstrated in reducing the embodied carbon of a project is also highly valued by our team.

Our schemes are designed to complement the communities they are in, so often we look for architects who have knowledge in that particular city or area. Local authorities sometimes have requirements for architecture too, so it can be a good solution to work with partners that have designed within those parameters before.

We’ve also run two Archiboo pitches over the years, and are working with two practices we met through the competition – O’DonnellBrown and Holland Harvey. Off the back of that experience we’re shaping up a similar competition that will be engineer-led, but with architects involved, so we’d encourage those interested to keep an eye out for this before the summer.

Is your sense that architects have the necessary skills to assist you with the kind of work that you do? If not, where is the skills gap?

Absolutely – architects play a fundamental role in creating not just homes but also spaces – amenities, landscapes, every part of a scheme. As a developer with a deep appreciation of design and so many trained architects in our team, we have a lot of respect for the role of architects in our work. There are specific types of buildings and homes that HUB delivers and architects play a key role in helping to shape them.

One thing we are noticing is that some practices are giving away various roles that used to be filled in-house to third parties and other consultants, which diminishes their role. We appreciate the argument that this is sometimes to deal with legal requirements, but think capabilities like community engagement can be really valuable for architects to possess in-house.

What’s the one thing an architect could say or do that would make you think they’re not the right practice for you?

A general lack of openness to relationship-building and collaboration at all levels of a project would be a major issue. Our approach to build relationships before buildings is fundamental to what we do. As the first port-of-call for any scheme, we’re talking to local people to get their thoughts and working together with partners and communities to shape it in an authentic way. For anyone we work with, it’s of huge importance they are open to this process.

Another major thing is that with the commercial reality of what we do, inflexibility and commitment to their proposals at the expense of everything else would be a problem. We need to be able to work closely and collaborate with the architects we work with. As developers we absolutely respect the expertise architects bring to the project, but we really appreciate architects that can utilise that expertise to adapt designs when required to ensure a scheme stays viable.

You’ve recently launched HubCap, a new arm of the company focused on repurposing existing buildings to deliver emerging housing models. Why did you feel the need for this to be a specific part of the company? How does this focus on low carbon and retrofit relate to HUB overall?

HubCap is a new initiative for HUB, designed to be more agile than ’the mother ship’, but there is a particular focus on low carbon too. While HUB is prioritising lowering carbon across every scheme, we’re using HubCap as a vehicle to explore retrofit more deeply – or ‘second cycle’ as we prefer to call it. This is innately lower in embodied carbon than new build and through HubCap we’re able to acquire great central city sites that wouldn’t be suitable for HUB BTR developments. We’ve launched HubCap with two sites in London and Edinburgh, which are both former offices we’re converting into co-living and aparthotel schemes. We’re excited to explore this further, alongside the carbon benefits that come with retrofitting.

Tell us about Queen’s Quarter.

Queen’s Quarter is a 513-home mixed tenure scheme in Croydon developed by HUB, and designed by AHMM, with landscape architecture by Grant Associates.  The project is an excellent case study of the way we like to work in partnership. We developed the scheme alongside Croydon Council who owned the land, and funding partner Bridges Fund Management, a social impact investor.  Together we brought in L&G and L&Q to forward-fund three of the buildings. As part of the deal with the council we also delivered a fourth block of 90 social rent homes, as well as a reimagined public park, Queen’s Gardens, which was co-designed with the local community.

What other projects are you working on and what’s next?

We recently completed our project in Abbey Wood, designed by shedkm, and we have a busy pipeline of projects, with several being submitted for planning before the summer. We’ve got the build underway for HUB BTR schemes in Maidenhead, Wembley and Leeds, plus numerous other schemes in progress in Birmingham and Edinburgh.

We’re excited to kick things off with HubCap, with the first two projects going through the planning process now. That’s going to continue to be a major focus for us moving forward and we’re actively looking to acquire more central city sites for repurposing projects. Generally speaking, we’re looking for more sites and opportunities in lifestyle cities around the UK for HUB as well as HubCap.