It’s hard to believe half a decade has passed since we opened our Nottingham office in 2017 and created Hollis’ Business Transformation Unit.

We had no idea then what was on the horizon. Long before the global shift to remote working spurred on by Covid-19, we were committed to doing things differently, taking an innovative approach to our work and embracing new technologies to help us take the next step forward for ourselves and for our clients.

Hollis’ Nottingham office now has a team of over 20, responsible for sourcing and implementing technological advances across our UK and European offices as well as delivering IT support, infrastructure, software development and programme management. And when I joined the firm in 2019 as Head of Digital Transformation, the team had already made great strides in embedding new ways of working and introducing new technologies to enhance our offering; ultimately providing greater value to our clients through improved efficiencies.

Five years in – three since I joined – and one very disruptive pandemic in the meantime, I’m happy to say that it’s all working brilliantly.

The concept for the Business Transformation Unit, since renamed Digital Transformation, was to create a central hub which would anticipate, adapt and respond quickly to change. We wanted to ensure our surveyors, engineers, technical specialists, consultants and project managers always had the resources to develop and enhance their services, and to find innovative and imaginative approaches to problem solving for clients. This expands also to our business support and operational teams. After all, we are one team working towards the same goals together and delivering the best.

Our Digital Transformation team work closely with our Head of Innovation, to deliver on three core innovation strategies; the visualisation of information, the utilisation of data and increasing efficiencies of the services delivered to clients or in the workflow of internal teams. Incorporating innovation into all we do, I’m proud to have led the team in implementing a number of strategic digital and cultural changes for Hollis as well as supporting the wider Hollis team with new initiatives such as our drone and data capture service.

Just some of our key achievements include:

• Achieving ISO27001 accreditation, giving our clients confidence that their data is safeguarded
• Extensive security improvements and Cyber essentials plus accreditation
• Putting data at the fore with extensive data cleansing across our IT estate
• The roll-out of Microsoft Dynamics Project Service Automation & Finance & Operations (ERP), the largest transformational change project ever undertaken by Hollis
• Launched a new internal Hollis Hub and mobile risk app making specific tasks far easier and allowing employees to perform their jobs more efficiently

But far from just revelling in our accomplishments, in true Hollis form we continue to look forward. We are busy developing new initiatives that will work with our other tools and technology, such as H360 and virtual TDD, to ensure we create the best possible client experience. Watch this space for lots of exciting new innovations coming soon.

Ultimately, I want to make sure we capture the learnings from the past five years and develop it further over the next five and beyond supporting our clients as we all together evolve and innovate as well as support #TeamHollis delivery to our clients; a service we are very proud of and seek to maintain the highest standards. It’s an exciting time to be part of the Digital Transformation Team, especially as we get ready to move into our new home in Cubo’s Fenchurch House on 01 October. If anyone would be keen to join our team, please do get in touch!