TGA celebrated their 60th anniversary last month and have over 75 per cent of their targeted workload for the current financial year already confirmed in only three months.
Typically, TGA work on projects valued at between £6m and £60m, providing design and consultancy services across building performance, building services engineering, specialist lighting design and low carbon design.
Business has flourished over the last twelve months, with the company recently making eight appointments to provide additional resource across their Leeds, Durham and Newcastle offices to cope with the demand for their services across a wide variety of new and existing buildings.
With a focus on decarbonisation, they are also celebrating some key project wins, such as working with Newcastle City Council on a £16m Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) – a government-backed scheme which provides grants for public sector bodies to fund decarbonisation and energy efficiency measures – the £8.3m Morrison Busty Low Carbon Facility for Durham County Council and the Durham Custody Suite for Durham Constabulary.
Speaking about the success and longevity here at TGA, Scott Graham, director, said: “We are all delighted with the way the company is performing. The world has moved on quite some way since we were established, but we have always been committed to keeping abreast of advances in modern building technology – and there have been many in our sector – as well as growing organically.
“We also have a good conversion rate of winning work at around 35 per cent, which helps, along with a great deal of repeat business from design team partners.
“We are proud to regard ourselves as champions of workforce diversity and currently employ engineering professionals from Singapore, Malaysia, India and Burundi and are viewed as a good training ground for school and college leavers. In fact, our recent appointment of four graduate engineers will provide a platform for the future growth of the business.”
As the world came out of lockdown, TGA took advantage of £250,000 funding from the North East Growth Capital Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund, to restructure the business and implement its diversification strategy, which includes plans to double turnover in the next five years as well as open further offices in the West, North West and South West.
Director, Jason Jobes, believes this has led the company to be able to work for some of the region’s most successful architects. He said:
“The use of energy in new and existing buildings is of the utmost importance as part of the climate emergency and with more and more clients adopting a net zero carbon approach, our work is increasingly informing the wider architectural design of buildings to allow them to be constructed with the lowest possible carbon footprint. As a result, we are valued by both our architecture clients as well as contractors.
“The funding we received enabled us to not only improve TGA’s own technology infrastructure but also to expand and strengthen our team to take advantage of the growing importance of environmental performance within building design.”
TGA has a solid reputation within the historic buildings sector with recent involvement for example in the highly successful redevelopment and refurbishment of Neville Hall in central Newcastle, but in the future, they will be additionally focused on strengthening their position in healthcare, education and leisure.
Other current projects include parts of the redevelopment of Pilgrim Street in Newcastle, Durham University’s Boldon House refurbishment, the renovation and improvement of buildings at Raby Castle, new projects at Sunderland Royal Hospital and a range of leisure centres at Chester le Street, Bishop Auckland and Marple in Stockport.
TGA are headquartered in Durham, but currently employ 45 staff across their offices in Newcastle, Leeds, Stevenage and London.
