A TRIO of former RMJM staff has set up a design house and is planning to compete for contracts in the UK and abroad.
Tony Kettle, Colin Bone and David Tripney believe Kettle Collective, with its headquarters in Edinburgh and a studio to open in Dubai before the end of the year, can quickly establish itself on the international architecture stage and tackle large projects.
The site in the United Arab Emirates is expected to act as a hub to provide a gateway to lucrative markets around the Middle East and Russia. The team behind the venture also intend to offer project management plus urban, interior and product design services.
That could involve drawing up a master plan for a site or building then working on all elements of the interior down to the exact fixtures and fittings.
Mr Kettle, who spent more than 20 years with RMJM, has a portfolio including the Falkirk Wheel, the Dubai International Convention Centre and Moscow's City Palace Tower.
He was also heavily involved in the 462-metre Lakhta Tower headquarters for oil giant Gazprom in St Petersburg which will soon be the tallest building in Europe. Mr Kettle will be the design principal at Kettle Collective and said: "This is a really exciting opportunity to establish a new design house in Scotland with an international focus, building on our team's previous experiences.
"Our UK and Middle East teams will work closely together to deliver high quality projects of all scales, which will continue to challenge the norm."
Mr Tripney has spent two decades in Dubai, most recently involved in selling Holford Associates, where he was a partner, to Hyder Consulting for £9.2 million. While in the Middle East he has worked on some of its biggest con-struction projects including the 6.5 million square feet Mall of the Emirates, which has its own indoor ski slope.
Mr Bone spent five years at RMJM and was most recently managing principal of its European studio with a focus on breaking into markets such as Bahrain, Qatar, Russia and eastern Europe.
Mr Tripney said: "In addition to our design offering, we are able to structure a full delivery service for clients, integrating strategic partners with a dedicated team on the ground.
"We provide a bespoke service tailored to individual client requirements, and there are a number of potential opportunities in the market which will allow the company to grow over the next two to three years."
The members of Kettle Collective are not the only high-profile former RMJM staffers to set up on their own this year.
In March, Paul Stallan and Alistair Brand set up Stallan-Brand Architecture in Glasgow.
RMJM, Scotland's biggest architectural practice, has shed hundreds of staff in the past few years as difficult global markets have contributed to a decline in revenue.
The most recent annual accounts at Companies House show a near-£11m annual loss in the 12 months to April 30, 2011, and that the Morrison family, which own RMJM, acquired the entire debt of the business from Bank of Scotland.
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