A DAY IN THE LIFE: NICK WILLIAMSON, PROPERTY INVESTMENT MANAGER

Let’s kick off with your favourite bit about your job?

It’s always good when the team win awards for our pub designs, but really my favourite part of the job is seeing the standard of the estate getting better and better and Robinsons being associated with a certain quality.

When you say ‘I work for Robinsons’, its linked with quality.

It’s true, more often than not, you can rely on it being a good pub when you see our signage….

I think when I joined 10 years ago, it felt like we had a lot of pubs to get through. We are getting through the estate & in 2025 will even be revisiting some of the schemes we’ve already done to carry out phase two of the investment. Seeing the pubs improve and have a great reputation is really pleasing and we get plenty of compliments about the quality of our refurbishments.

Talk us through your journey at Robinsons…

I joined Robinsons as a Senior Designer when Duncan called to sound me out about a position (we’d worked together for years previously). When I joined, there was lots of good designers already in the property team, and whilst I could design, I was also comfortable controlling the costs and the project management side of things too.

I think it helps massively with my role that I appreciate the importance of the design, whilst understanding the pressures there are delivering a job on time, to the brief and on budget. I can see what would be detrimental to remove from design schemes and can see where we can squeeze on things too. I’m not better at design or at project managing than any of our team, but I can do them both, I think that’s a great asset to have and I hope gains the respect of my colleagues when we discuss things.

I’ve been Property Investment Manager for about 7 years now I think and took over from John Riley when he became the Property Director.

My job title doesn’t really say what I do that well, and it’s funny to hear how people introduce me as its never my actual title. I’m not working on the stock exchange, as plenty of people on LinkedIn like to presume.

Aside from recruiters thinking you’re on working Wall Street, what’s kept you here?

We have a great team, it is a brilliant place to work and I never dread coming into work. There are days I know are going to be difficult, if I’ve got to deliver bad news or the pressure is on to get information out, but on the whole, there is always something new with no one day the same which I love. Robinsons as a whole is a great company to work for and before starting at Robinsons, I was in line for a directorship at my old practice, and when I was deciding on taking this job, I was a bit unsure, I was concerned that it would be all about pubs for the older generation, but looking at what we’ve done, it’s been fantastic and I've never regretted my decision to join.

It’s also great to have that connection to the family and directors. I was used to working with clients and the point of contact unable to sign off things, so it could take time for decisions to be made. But here, if you need an answer, you are in direct line with the people who make decisions. Having that connection means I can get answers quick, and solutions fast. Everything is helped by the fact we have a great team and I go in there every day and there is no slog, it’s a really nice environment. 10 years, it’s a long time!

So you mentioned your title being a bit ambiguous… And we know you work in property not finance, so, what do you do?

Essentially, it’s my role to manage a team talented and professional individuals and to ensure the money that has been set aside to improve our pub estate is spent. I assist the operation team in maximising the ROI on that money. We don’t get thanked for spending over or spending under, but roughly we’ve got to aim to spend (invest) that money which has been allocated in the budget, and we will get a return on that money. [This means that by investing in a pub we budget that we will increase trade in the pub and therefore improve beer sales and a better fair maintainable trade].

It’s my job to program what this investment spend looks like. From helping identify where we can best spend the money with the op’s teams, to then managing the property team to deliver this program of refurbishments/investments on time, to budget and looking great. It sounds simple when you put it like that, but there is a massive amount of work goes in to getting to that stage of listing each pub on the investment programme.

You’ve done a few schemes yourself this year?

I have, yeah. I fill in the gaps where our team are short, or I’m better suited to the scheme. This year we will have done 14 jobs in the first few months of the year. We don’t always have enough people, and as my degree is in architecture, and I enjoy landscaping, I tend to do most of the landscaping schemes with the help of one our sub-contractors. I also often do the sketch and feasibility schemes for a lot of the projects. I’ll take the brief and get the plans, draw it up how I think they will work best and then present the scheme to the directors with budget costs attached. I can then take it away and allocate it to one of our designers and project managers to proceed. I love doing these scheme and looking how to improve the pubs.

It sounds like the whole operation is a bit of a machine. So, what sorts of things do go behind the scenes?

We now have about 18 months’ worth of investments lined up, we’ve increased our efficiency and we’re working with the pub operations teams to get things on programme well in advance. There are big lead times on some projects, and they can move and change about a lot too.

People might laugh and say, ‘you lot doing your cushions and curtains down there’, but the amount of work we cover from listing building consents, planning, drawing up schemes for structural purposes, building regulations, tendering projects, precuring surveys all comes through the property team. Then the design concepts through to drawing packages, discussions, visiting our Business Partners and explaining the process and investments to them, fabrics, aesthetics, costs, noise reports, asbestos reports, the list of things that the team do is endless and we think about everything that will be needed for that project.

We must be good with people too. We’re in a lot of contact with our Business Partners & General Managers when we do refurbishments, and we need to be able to adapt to how different they all are. Some are clued up and ready to go it, others are nervous and unsure. We’ve got to have that empathy and that connection.

I liken it to If you’ve ever had any work done with your house, its stressful and messy for that period, be it big or small, it’s in the place you live, and it creates chaos. I always think, imagine that 10-fold if it’s both your business and your home & investing money. We’re there to communicate with them and talk them though things to them to put them at ease. Being visible is important and our team is good at that. They are the friendly reassuring faces the business partner or general manager needs.

I also have lots of parts of the puzzles to piece together when we look a the projects. Each pub’s busy periods are different, but also a lot have similar desires of their ‘ideal time’ and trying to piece everything together from internal team availability to contractor availability and ensuring pub losses are minimal is tough. Then just for good measure you will occasionally get a curveball thrown in there from a local authority or application delay too. Nothing is ever straight forward!