The Consulting House was founded in 2003 – and secured the PKF brand in 2004. Mr. Sven Gade came on board in 2006 to re-start the company which until then had essentially been a provider of market and feasibility studies.
“With 30 years of hotel management and blue chip strategy advisory to the real estate and hospitality industries, I saw a rare opportunity; a booming market environment, a global brand and a blank canvas to start from! We combined those ingredients into a very focused strategy; away from pure hotel studies only to a deep quality and industry focused holistic strategic advisory firm offering a value adding partnership to clients and projects: we are part of your team. We prefer being with select clients for the full life cycle and building deep relationships – a boutique advisory aimed at quality, not quantity” comments Mr. Sven Gade
They widened their geographic presence from UAE/GCC to MENA, adding full development management capability & developed a highly structured suite of industry specific corporate and development strategy services. To enable better positioning, PKF created a highly qualified multi-national and multi-cultural team environment – for which it moved to new offices.
A lot happened in parallel: whilst running up to 30 projects simultaneously (some of which quite large), they set up a totally different team and new offices, created all systems / procedures / quality assurance / an entire corporate framework and made its brand known to the markets. “It was wild – and hard work – but very satisfying” says the Mr.Sven.
PKF’s vision was to create a boutique firm operating like a global player – but without the weighty infrastructure and bureaucracy. Quality as well as flexibility – the pros without the cons! Truly able to focus on clients and projects and give its best. It was ambitious and with an amazing team, they made it happen. They worked on outstanding projects – and still do. Mixed use developments across the MENA region with truly iconic and unique characteristics and wild elements at times… Some of them exist now, some fell victim to the global financial crisis, some are still underway – but overall PKF looks at its track record with pride.
The company operates under a global brand but are an independently owned company. That gives it access to a fantastic global network whilst retaining the independence and flexibility to respond to clients in a tailored manner. Their corporate structure and licence enable it to open branch offices throughout the MENA region where markets and projects demand that. The owners of the company are from a diverse background giving it a wide network, cultural awareness and deep local market knowledge where needed.
Frequently, clients – having built deep relationships with PKF – look at opportunities beyond their region and prefer this team to lead the advisory. Clients then set up a co-operation with the respective country office to carry out the project under PKF’s guidance and methodology. They remain the client link, often driven by confidentiality preferences. Thus, the brand sometimes works in far-flung places throughout the world. The combination of their multi-national team and local PKF support results in the best possible outcome.
Every industry has significant challenges; real estate follows economic cycles, hence, the global financial crisis and more recently the oil price issue led to demand decline. In addition, the political issues in the Levant and North Africa took away significant parts of PKF’s geographic markets. In those downtime’s, it is difficult to maintain the strategic positioning that they defined.
The companies approach requires highly qualified people and deep research. Thus, their fees tend to be above norm. When markets contract, the players still active become very price conscious and PKF has to resist the temptation to participate in the resulting price wars. Studies in particular, become a commodity product which is not purchased to make sound strategic decisions but to satisfy lender requirements or investment partners. Even clients who cherish their quality become cost focused and expect them to reduce fees whilst maintaining quality which is simply not possible.
The company invests immense amounts of time, training and guiding their teams. To train someone up to PKF TCH standard – even experienced individuals – easily takes three months. When business drops, people leave – and with them the investment. The company then has to reinvest when cycles go up. Finding the right team members when needed – given the brands high expectations – can also be quite challenging.
Values and Goals of PKF-TCH
Whatever the company does is based on the brands core values: strategic thinking, business led design, high senior level input, co-development, pragmatic/fact based deliverables, quality over quantity and bank-ability. They put facts and pragmatism first and leave ego and wishful thinking behind – since they do not add value in real estate. We communicate reality, not what clients want to hear. says Mr Sven.
Their work is driven by three core philosophies:
- Before spending on planning, the business case must stack up (what should be built). They call it Business Led Design (as opposed to design led business). Developing real estate is too expensive to make mistakes.
- Real estate is ultimately about end users (buyers, tenants, visitors). Hence, the product (especially mixed use) should be programmed with them in mind to maximize footfall, spend and synergy. They have developed a visionary, highly complex and proprietary process called Destination Programming to ensure that people stay longer, spend more, visit again and send all their friends.
- Data, facts and figures drive decisions. In a region where reliable information is more difficult to come by than in mature markets, that means deep research, field interviews and advanced analyses – all of which require time and experience
PKF Offerings & Services
They offer about 20 service lines in 3 main categories: strategic advisory (corporate and project oriented), development management and a suite of industry specific services including 5 core types of studies.
They cover all real estate classes except heavy industrial. Their knowledge and experience include residential, commercial leisure/entertainment, retail, all aspects of hospitality and tourism, education, healthcare and even light industrial / warehousing. However: PKF only covers their industry (real estate, hospitality and tourism) – they don’t go into – say – telecoms / automotive / logistics, etc..
The reason is simple: the entire team comes from their industry sectors – and they pride themselves to have worked there and truly understand them. PKF does not believe that they could offer the same depth and value in unfamiliar territory.
Each of their services is defined in step and flow models in three levels of detail which makes them very transparent for their clients to understand and follow – from the proposal onwards. Everything the company does is driven by project plans, milestones and resource budgets – and are very clear on time input and resulting fees which makes PKF very trackable.
That level of structure and clarity is unusual but they understand the concerns of clients: who want to
- understand what PKF will do and
- budget in advance.
Hence, the brand promptly delivers what they are commissioned for at the time promised – without fail. They always tend to add options and alternatives and often go beyond the original intent. The team has lots of ideas to contribute and different ways of looking at projects: each is special and they take pride in coming up with special ideas. All that is required is for clients to have a similarly strategic philosophy and to be looking for unique quality outcomes – because PKF’s team members are not cookie-cutters recycling information.
The future of the Business Consulting industry
Last year it has been proven in numbers that PKF’s business led design approach makes sense. They sponsored a study which showed that over 50% of real estate projects in the GCC start out with design led business (planning without business case or target segments defined). The study further showed that in over 65% of cases, there is a direct cost for abortive or repeat planning work – once the business case was assessed. On average, that cost is over AED 1.6 mn – meaning it can be much higher.
PKF’s approach is not only more successful but also cheaper. They have promoted that for almost ten years and now got proof. Increasingly, clients go to them because they understand the approach and want to start out in the right direction. The brand knows how to guide such clientele towards the better direction and will continue to push.
They have continuously tried to move industry players away from trodden paths & succeeded. Real estate is moving too slow when it comes to core innovation despite there being many possibilities: end user and community focus, (genuine) sustainable development, alternative materials and production methods and different strategic models. PKF will continue to be ambassadors and preferably work with clients who think alike.
It is amazing how much was achieved by the brand in the GCC region over the last couple of decades – after all, this firm took part actively in the last 14 years. They often invite clients to allow themselves a moment of looking back. For example, PKF did an “urban sprawl” on Dubai over the last 20 years recently – in 5 year steps. It is amazing to see how that city grew in absolute terms – and the team firmly believe there is much more to come. The leaders are not only visionary but also highly energetic and think a long way ahead.
Tech Innovations & how it has changed the industry
Real estate is already highly enabled technologically – during development through specialised systems such as BIM to plan and monitor developments, PMS to run completed assets and end user systems to enhance the quality of life such as home management, retail and entertainment offers enhanced by technology and hospitality using long distance advance booking including prior user feedback.
If anything, the challenge is user friendliness because the amount of information available can be overwhelming. “I started in advisory when there were no laptops or mobile phones, let alone PDAs – I remember that well. Ensuring that we select the right technology and then actually use it well and to its full capability is key.” comments Mr. Sven
Mr. Sven concludes “As business and industry advisers, we tend to be first in detecting tools and embracing them. Our tool set has changed so much over the last decades that keeping our training modules up to date alone can be a challenge. Connectivity to client systems is another important area for us to allow true co-development.”
