All around the world…

It struck a couple of us one day in the middle of August – entering the office after a breakfast meeting, the OBI office seemed eerily quiet. That’s unusual – there’s always something going on here. Even disregarding the phone calls with clients and the catch-up meetings with other team members, there’s a hubbub of the standard football chat, and people sorting coffees. And even in this traditionally quieter period, we’ve been as busy as ever.

There was a reason for the tranquillity though – pretty much the whole team was travelling far and wide to a surprising range of locations for work purposes. Some of the places we’ve been to over the last few weeks include Cheltenham, Leeds, Birmingham, Reading, London, and Bergheim in Germany. We’re working in Glasgow and Northampton, and on a project involving Barcelona and Lisbon. We’ve got work in Malaysia. As you can see, for a relatively small business, we’re stretching far and wide into all parts of the country and beyond.

This partly reflects the global nature of business nowadays, but it also highlights the value we’ve provided and continue to provide for our clients. Almost without exception, we first work with our clients within Manchester, whether it’s an office move, a dilapidations claim or an investment transaction. But with an increasing number of clients we’ve struck up such an understanding of their business and what

drives it that we’ve become trusted advisers on their property requirements across the UK and beyond. It might be searches for Company X in one UK city, it might be project management on a new office for a long-term client in City Y.

As the old maxim has it, travel broadens the mind, and it’s always good to get out to different places, to get a feel for what’s going on. Ideas are everywhere, and there’s a certain amount of things we pick up from every trip we go on. It could be a potential deal at a building we’ve noticed in a particular spot, or it might be design ideas or a potential lead for our workplace consultancy team.

We’re still very much proud to be a Manchester business. At no point soon will we be investing in an Only Fools and Horses-style van with all these locations picked out in that ‘New York – Paris – Peckham’ fashion. We’re more than happy where we are, in an office with inspiring views over St

Peter’s Square, one of the country’s finest public spaces.

But looking at all the above, we think we can definitely now say with full confidence that OBI offer full national coverage for our clients. So wherever you have a property issue, we can very probably help – do pick up the phone or call in to see us. You know where we are.