Interview: Creative tension
3 Nov 08
When Hugh Mullan arrived at the architecture firm RMJM, the creatives were not at all sure a finance director was a good thing. But his role – and their confidence – grew
by Richard Goslan
A copy of Ayn Rand’s cult novel The Fountainhead might seem like an unusual gift to buy your newly-installed group finance director. The book, published in 1943 and made into a movie starring Gary Cooper a few years later, tells the story of an uncompromising young architect who takes a stand against the establishment – and ultimately prevails.
For Hugh Mullan, it was an indication about what kind of company he had just joined. Over its 50 years, RMJM had built up a reputation as a design-led architectural practice, responsible for some of the world’s most innovative – and often controversial – buildings, such as the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood.
Reading The Fountainhead helped this CA understand what he was getting into.
“I wouldn’t pretend to be an expert on architecture in any way, but what you have to do is have an empathy with the creatives when they talk about their work,” says Mullan.
“The Fountainhead is a classic novel about the passion in architecture and how you don’t compromise your art for commercial gain. It was a hell of a read! It helped me to try to understand the drivers – what makes an architect tick – and appreciate that and respect it, and also to explain to the architects where you’re coming from. Then they’ll give you that respect back. It’s really a partnership.”
Mullan says that when he joined in December 2004, the company was doing well creatively but in terms of financial organisation and support infrastructure it was suffering from neglect.
“The only conference telephone was kept locked in the CEO’s drawer. So for a firm with, at that time, 12 offices across the UK, the Middle East and Asia, they didn’t really do conference calls,” recalls Mullan.
“Communications were poor, but the raw talent at the firm was there, it was just latent. So I set about putting in more formal structures, improving communications and getting everyone to work together.”
That meant getting the architects to take finance on board and giving them responsibility not just for the creative process, but for the financial performance of their projects.
“I had to build up trust in finance – before I went in, the talk had been that a finance director would ruin this firm,” says Mullan. “The culture of the artistic architects was that their passion was their art, if you like, so the idea of having someone who was going to bring in a discipline around the numbers was alien to the firm.
“What I did was to devolve the responsibility and give the architects ownership of the financial performance. And I gave them visibility of performance, so one of the things that happened very quickly is they grabbed it – they wanted to know how they were doing. Historically it was kept very close and very centralised and not really shared, so giving them ownership made the architects appreciate how hard they were working and maybe not being properly rewarded for it, and that began to change the culture.”
Mullan’s role quickly expanded beyond that of group FD. The CEO, Brian Stewart, left RMJM in March 2005, and for the next 15 months Mullan took over many of his responsibilities. In 2006, Peter Morrison was installed as CEO by the company’s majority shareholder, the Morrison family, and set about expanding the business internationally.
That led to the acquisition in June last year of the US architectural practice Hillier for £15m, which provides RMJM with a major position in the US market.
“We met the management team at Hillier and started talking about whether this could work,” says Mullan. “We had several exchanges with our designers visiting theirs and vice versa, because we thought it was important to get the right cultural fit. Then my role was, in addition to the cultural liaison, about arranging the due diligence, getting Deloitte on board, working with the lawyers and making sure the deal stacked up. It ended up going through smoothly, and has been very successful since.”
RMJM’s growing international profile has helped shield it from the worst effects of the credit crunch in the UK. Some of the firm’s high-profile projects here have run into trouble, with the Custom House Quay development on Glasgow’s River Clyde stalled, and the Princes Dock project in Liverpool looking for a new client.
But since moving from the role of group finance director to become managing director for Europe last December, Mullan has made a strategic decision that all of the company’s studios in the UK must try to take on a balance of local work and overseas projects.
“I now have specific responsibility for central and eastern Europe, which are growing markets, as well as north Africa,” says Mullan. “We’re in Poland, Russia and Egypt – and those three countries have some of the world’s fastest growing construction markets. We recognise that some western economies are going into recession, but we’re looking to diversify and not to be overly reliant in any one sector.
“We’re also one of the few international architects licensed to take projects through the approval process in Russia, so we see lots of opportunities there, and in central and eastern Europe.
“And a lot of our work in the UK is in education, where there’s a huge ongoing programme which at the moment is unaffected.”
RMJM has also benefitted from working in countries where sovereign wealth funds have ensured there is sufficient capital to pour into major projects, both in the country of origin and elsewhere.
“A lot of our Dubai projects are funded through sovereign wealth funds by the royal family there,” says Mullan. “We recognise that with the impact the credit crunch is having on the markets and its lending to developers, that’s going to restrict commercial development in the UK. So we’re actively speaking to some of our clients in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere to see if they might be interested in doing some projects here in the UK. And we’re working in China, with projects funded by the Chinese government, and also Singapore.”
As a result of the company’s global business and his position managing Europe, Mullan is rarely in one place for long, but after a career spent working in various locations, and a variety of businesses, that’s the way he likes it.
“One of the advantages of becoming a CA was that it gave you that ability to travel, and that’s something I’ve always been interested in,” he says. “So it was very much a career decision to go out to the Middle East and then the US, because I wanted to travel, but it was also a way of advancing my career.”
All that time on the road does not leave much opportunity for R&R, but when Mullan is at home outside Glasgow he tries to make the most of it.
“The thing I really enjoy is spending Saturday afternoon cooking a family meal at home,” says Mullan, who is married with two daughters in their late teens, and a 20-year-old who’s doing the third year of her law degree at university in Copenhagen. “After so much travelling and eating out when you’re on the road, it’s great to come home for a meal with the family.”