The architecture firm co-owned by judge on one of RTE's most popular shows, 'Home of the Year’, Hugh Wallace has "bounced back" from the pandemic impact and is on course to increase fee revenues to €2m this year.
In an interview on Friday, Mr Wallace said: "We have bounced back. We have super clients, but it has taken time to recover from the Covid-19 impact".
Director at Douglas Wallace Consultants Ltd, Mr Wallace said that expected revenues of €2m this year "will be back to pre-Covid levels and a bit higher".
Mr Wallace said that the projected revenues of €2m for 2023 compare to revenues of €1.2m and €800,000 during the two prior Covid-19 hit years.
He recalled "Paddy’s Day in 2020 half our business was gone on the Tuesday morning. The hotel industry had collapsed and 50% of our work was with hotels."
Mr Wallace said that the hotel business has all come back.
With the uplift in business where the firm currently employs 22, Mr Wallace said that staff numbers should be up to 25 over the next year.
The presenter of RTE's 'The Great House Revival' said: "We have refocused the business. We have done a lot of work in residential, one-off large houses and larger residential schemes and we are doing a pharma project for the first time."
"We managed the business exceptionally well during Covid and we managed to hold onto our core staff," he said.
"We have driven the business as soon as the market changed and we are reaping the rewards. I have really enjoyed the work since March of last year."
Mr Wallace was commenting as new accounts for Douglas Wallace Consultants Limited showed that profits increased by 28% to €81,745 in the 12 months to the end of June last year compared to profits of €63,733 for the prior year.
The firm last year paid out dividends of €53,936. At the end of June last, the company had accumulated profits of €446,477.
The firm's cash funds dipped marginally to €540,490 last year.
Mr Wallace said that the firm’s "big project" is Harcourt Developments Waterford North Quays development.
Mr Wallace said that Waterford City Council is terrific to deal with "and everyone is in the pot together to deliver a regeneration project for Waterford and that is what good planning is about".
Mr Wallace said that he expects the project to go to planning in the third quarter of this year.
Mr Wallace said that the architect sector has been hit with "everything now stuck in the planning system".
He said: "We have commercial projects waiting 18 months at An Bord Pleanála waiting for a decision. Overseas investors are looking at you thinking you are stupid 'and asking why can’t you deliver planning?'".
Mr Wallace said that the planning delays are costing the country projects.
"Of course they are. Why would you invest here when you are waiting three to four years and you can go to another country and it takes you a year," he said.
- reporting Gordon Deegan
