AS he surveys the scene from his company’s sparkling new office in Glasgow city centre, Steve Barnett states with “cautious optimism” that the Scottish commercial property sector is showing signs of recovery from the ravages of the recession.

There is concrete evidence to support the view. Not far from 80 St Vincent Street, where chartered surveying firm Shepherd has its building and commercial office, the giant St Vincent Plaza speculative office development has risen in recent months to tower over the Kingston Bridge.

Even closer is 110 Queen Street, the office development constructed by BAM, where the space has already been pre-let or pre-sold.

Yet there is still some ground to cover before confidence is fully restored, according to Shepherd’s managing partner. Mr Barnett believes the recovery has still to reach all parts of the commercial property market.

“There is no denying it has certainly been a challenge,” Mr Barnett said, “and it continues to be a challenge.

“There is increased optimism - you are beginning to see that in speculative builds going on in the last year.

“A lot of properties coming to market in the good established areas are seeing reasonable, healthy levels of demand. But outwith there is still an abundance of secondary [and] tertiary stock.

“All in all there is certainly a lot more confidence in the market, but it is still very early days.”

The surveyor expressed similar sentiments over the residential market, noting that, as ever, the old mantra about the pre-eminence of location is continuing to hold sway.

Properties of traditional build, and in areas with a good reputation for schooling, are faring better than others, he said.

Mr Barnett has been involved in the property market long enough to tell the difference between a market in recovery mode and one in rude health.

Hailing from Dundee, where Shepherd was established in 1880, he studied at the University of Aberdeen, graduating as a bachelor of land economy.

He spent the summers in between his academic years working as a surveyor with the local council, around the time the council tax was coming into effect in the early 1990s.

“They basically needed guys to hold the end of the tape to go out and measure houses and things,” Mr Barnett recalls.

“That’s what got me into surveying. Fortunately enough I worked there every summer while I was at university and when university finished I was offered a full-time placement in there.

“I worked there for five years, qualified with Tayside Valuation Joint Board, which is the assessor department, doing mainly business rates [and] setting rateable values.”

In 2000, he joined Shepherd as commercial surveyor in Dundee and less than a year later, in May 2001, he moved to the firm’s Glasgow office to run its commercial department. He rose to associate in 2004, became partner in 2006 and was elected managing partner in December 2014.

In addition to his work at Shepherd, Mr Barnett plays an active role in the wider industry. He was recently named a fellow of Royal Institution of the Chartered Surveyors, having joined the commercial board of RICS Scotland in January last year.

He is enthusiastic about his vocation and the diversity it offers is a message he is keen to promote to young people mulling which direction to take their careers.

Shepherd has a strong commitment to giving opportunities to young talent, he said. The surveyor runs a graduate trainee programme and places strong emphasis on succession planning.

And the average partner age is young at the firm, Mr Barnett notes.

The firm currently employs 225 staff in 33 offices around Scotland, including more than 50 commercial and building surveyors. Its residential offices are spread in neighbourhoods around the country.

Staff operate across four main disciplines – residential (including valuations and home reports), commercial (leases, acquisitions, disposals, rent reviews), building consultancy and commercial property management - implying great diversity in the roles each of its surveyors play.

“I firmly believe that surveying, whether it’s commercial, building consultancy or residential, just offers a fantastic opportunity for people coming out of school or universities just now to come into a vibrant career,” Mr Barnett said. “There is so much going in within the markets on a wider context.”

That the firm offers scope for career advancement is part of its appeal. It partly explains why its partners tends to be long serving.

“Every office is run by a partner or an associate,” Mr Barnett said. “When you then look at the length of service it’s an incredible average.”

Mr Barnett notes more interest is being shown in careers in property now the market is picking up following the recession, stating that there is a shortfall of surveyors in the industry at present.

The main universities reaching surveying in Scotland are Aberdeen, Glasgow Caledonian and Heriot-Watt. “The people coming out of university now are actually in demand,” he said.

“There are opportunities for them [graduates] to progress – it is up to them to take the opportunities and seize them. We have a strong work ethos.”

And he said the industry is doing a good job of attracting more females to work in the industry.

“I think that is changing. I know recently we have just taken on nine graduates and there is a good proportion there that are female.

“We look to invest in the future [and] have a significant graduate and trainee programme in place.”

Mr Barnett said Shepherd has grown largely organically through its 135 year history. But along the way is has made acquisitions, while seeking to grow its team by recruiting experienced figures from other practices.

In August 2013 it acquired Bell Ingram Commercial in a move which boosted its presence in Ayrshire. The deal followed its acquisition of Renfrewshire’s R&W Hall in May of that year.

On the whole, though, acquisitions are the exception as opposed to the rule.

While prospective deals will always be assessed “on their own merit”, Mr Barnett said the firm has no intention of wavering from a long-held strategy of creating organic growth opportunities, and attracting staff to buy into its ethos.

“We’ve always grown, in the main, organically,” he said. “We invest very heavily in staff, in graduates, in trainees. We like to train up our own staff and provide opportunities for them.

“That’s the way we have typically grown – to create hunger within the offices.”

And there have been some notable coups for Shepherd of late. One is a major deal with Jobs in Business Glasgow, the economic development offshoot of Glasgow City Council, which will see it provide facilities management services to 344 commercial units throughout the city. These range from offices to industrial estates.

Shepherd recently advised on Edinburgh-based FanDuel’s move to a new office in Glasgow, where the US fantasy sports providers hopes to take on as many as 200 software specialists.

And it has worked with the Post Office on its imminent move from St Vincent Street to West Nile Street, to the site formerly occupied by Crocket The Ironmonger.

In other developments, the firm has developed a new online service, Shepherd Connect, which allows its clients to track agency cases such as lettings or property sales in real time.

“Obviously we’d be looking to maintain the communication with clients, that’s paramount,” he said. “But actually, where clients have the opportunity to log in their own time and to see exactly what’s happened... it offers full transparency.

“That’s now, in my opinion, a market leading product we are launching into the market.

“It’s just giving another level of information to our already established and growing client base within the commercial marketplace. We do feel that this will offer a real boost to existing clients.”