Overseeing the tagging and microchipping of turtles in Tobago is an undeniably intriguing – and rather exotic – detail to have on one’s CV. Rather less so is milking cows on bleak, dark winter mornings on the Isle of Bute or Castle Douglas but neither seem to have an obvious association with building surveying and the launch of a new presence for commercial building, project and sustainability consultancy Jones Hargreaves last October.

Sammi Johnstone, a senior associate at the firm where she has worked for some seven years and who heads up the new office, explains why, after Zoology and Animal Welfare degrees at the University of Glasgow she transited to the world of surveying – and why working in the property sector with Jones Hargreaves is in harmony with her earlier interests.

“My father is a commercial surveyor as are some of my cousins so surveying was part of the family – and sometimes your family know you better than you know yourself,” she says.

“I worked in dairy farms for two years, was travelling away from home a lot of the time and was thinking about the need to get into a career that would earn me enough money to have a decent quality of life.

“When I was young we did a lot of what we called ‘castle hunting’, going to castles all over the UK and abroad, and we’ve always been a family that’s been appreciative of architecture and the history behind it.

“So when my dad suggested that I would really building surveying I relented, took the building surveying conversion course and within three months I knew I had made the right decision.”

She then got a graduate position at Cushman and Wakefield and says she hasn’t looked back since. “My father will quite happily take the kudos for being behind my subsequent success as it wasn’t a career I thought I would get into when I was in school, but it’s a career that not many people know a lot about and understand and which I find fascinating,” she adds.

Glasgow is Jones Hargreaves’ first office location in Scotland which it opened in response to client demand, seeing Miss Johnstone and her associate Daniel Little work with a range of investors, owners and occupiers across industrial, retail and office portfolios from an office at Savoy Tower on the city’s Renfrew Street.

It’s part of a rapid growth strategy that has seen the business launching in Manchester and Bristol to respond to client demand and to increase capacity across the UK, augmenting its presence in London, Leeds and Cardiff.

The two founding partners, Peter Hargreaves and Matthew Jones, set up the firm 15 years ago and in 2019 started to build the private consultancy side of the business. Miss Johnstone joined in 2021 when it had half a dozen employees, and there are now 35.

She currently has a dual role heading up the Glasgow office while still working on projects in Cardiff but looks forward to an imminent return to Scotland. “I have clients in Wales, who I’m working with on some pretty big projects so even though I’m moving, we have to see those through to the end,” she explains.

“When you start on something that’s exciting and challenging I don’t really like handing it over and like to see it through – and my clients in Cardiff are happy to wait for me to do that.

She’s keen to stress the importance of forming close relationships with clients and providing personalised services: “I have two or three clients for whom I pretty much do all their work and speak to them probably two or three times a day.

“They’ve become a bit like family at this point. It’s very flattering that they trust me to get on with their business and that’s what I’m replicating in Glasgow and already have clients in Scotland who I am on that basis with,” she says.

“Glasgow and Cardiff are quite similar with several parallels and our clients in Scotland increasingly want to work with people who are based there.

“We’ve done UK-wide work since I joined the firm, and before and we were always trying to reach the point where we could build ourselves up enough to have a full-time Scottish presence and now that we’ve done that, the work has come in thick and fast, which is great.

“I think also it comes down to fact that they like being able to talk to someone that sounds like them and can understand them –  so accent and culture go a long way.”

Jones Hargreaves prides itself on its energy assessment, environmental consultancy and sustainability expertise and Miss Johnstone says this multi-disciplinary approach very much represents the prevailing direction of travel in the sector.

“With in-house, mechanical and electrical building surveying – and with ESG (environmental, social, and governance) and sustainability issues increasingly to the fore –  I’ve noticed a massive difference in how we advised clients when I first qualified in 2017 compared to how we do it now,” she says.

She believes that rate of change is happening much faster than most people may have anticipated.

“While much is probably not achievable in the timescales that are being asked of them, it’s certainly shifted everyone’s approach as to how they want to manage their real estate and their assets in future.

“So even though there are statutory requirements, people’s actual thinking and their management strategies are changing regardless, with a definite shift to the wellbeing factor so our holistic approach to being a building surveyor is actually in tune with my background in zoology and being more environmentally friendly.”

It’s appealing, she says to be able to have both her interest streams coincide: “It’s good to get clients on board when they’re initiating projects and deciding how they want to proceed with them with the desire to improve things and leave something that’s better for the future beyond just a positive bottom line.”

The firm’s client range is varied, ranging from private, family money invested in real estate to large property-based funds in London and local companies who own perhaps a couple of properties that represent their pension pot.

“I think we benefit from not being shoehorned into any specific kind of genre or client profile and I never get the same two jobs twice, which is rewarding. As is the fact that I’ve been very fortunate to retain all my clients.”

Previously a keen rugby player, Miss Johnstone was forced to hang up her boots during the Covid pandemic – though her team-leading experience will be useful in Glasgow.

“It would be ideal for Jones Hargreaves to have three or four people in Scotland by Q3 or Q4 next year and Glasgow, where I went to university, is one of my favourite cities in the whole world. I’d love to be able to build a good team there but then also look to extend it to a team in Edinburgh as it would be great to achieve a wider Scottish presence.”