In Your Shoes - Stewart Clark

All eyes are on Dundee’s waterfront as it continues to emerge as one of the UK’s bravest and boldest redevelopment projects.

Key among the raft of exciting projects is Tayforth Properties’ transformation of historic transit Shed 25 into the state-of-the-art Water’s Edge commercial office development.

The man tasked with managing this multi million pound project – which is due to open in early summer – is Tayforth’s managing director Stewart Clark.

Stewart joined the company – which is co-owned by Chris van der Kuyl and Paddy Burns, founders of 4J Studios and developers of the Minecraft console editions - in 2016 after a ten-year period of running his own property development company.

Born and bred in Dundee, Stewart’s early career was as a full-time musician which led to him working for Chris and Paddy, producing audio and digital imagery for VIS Entertainment. In his last role with the company, he headed up the audio department creating music, special effects and dialogue for games such as State of Emergency and Brave.

With the V&A a catalyst for change in his home city, Stewart is excited by the opportunities for the area and has a keen eye for future potential developments.

International Visitors

Up early for my weekly site meeting with all the contractors at our stunning City Quay location. Water’s Edge involves some truly innovative technology and design, so it’s vital I monitor progress constantly and identify any issues which could affect our opening deadline.

Meeting over and I’m off to meet a delegation from the Turkish games industry. These guys are setting up a new tech park in Turkey and are visiting Dundee to see how the games industry is set up here. They wanted to come to Water’s Edge to see the kind of ‘Smart Building’ environment we are creating, particularly focusing on the environmental aspects and the technology. They seemed particularly impressed by our solar panels, battery storage and the air handling system.

Hard hat and hi-vis vest back on again this afternoon to show a new games company around Water’s Edge. Very positive feedback and I expect them to sign up as tenants.

Wonderful Website

Our website (www.watersedgedundee.co.uk) is almost as exciting as the building project itself. Keeping it up-to-date is vital so I’m meeting our web developers to discuss content and regular updates.

Accountant Jennifer wants to talk about the software for the building’s leasing units. This solution will hopefully automate most of the day-to-day aspects of dealing with tenants.

From software to flooring! I head off to the site to watch the process for installing the raised floors in all the offices. Since I’ll be managing Water’s Edge I like to know how everything has been built.

Connecting Co-workers

Conference call to Sofia in Bulgaria to discuss the implementation of our co-work and meeting room hire software. This is a package called Office R&D and will allow clients to book co-work desks or meeting rooms. It also creates an online portal for workers in the building to connect to each other and organise/create events etc. Water’s Edge will have 36 co-work desks and seven meeting rooms which will be available to people outside the building as well as our tenants.

The afternoon is spent searching for a firm to supply parking barriers. Turns out to be a very tricky proposition as it’s very difficult to get a reasonably priced system that will handle the differing needs of the offices and what will be one of Dundee’s biggest restaurants when it opens.

Can’t Name Names

Site visit with an international broadcaster (can’t name names just yet!). They are looking for new office space in Dundee and came down to see what we have to offer. Showed them round and they were very impressed.

Back in the office for a meeting with Fibrecast who are managing all our comms needs. Trying to work out the best way to manage our Wi-Fi between each company, the public areas and the restaurant. We have put our own broadband into the building (which is competitively priced against other providers) and we have the potential for up to 10Gbps of data into Water’s Edge.

Amazing Spaces

Water’s Edge is so more than just an office development. As well as boasting one of Dundee’s biggest restaurants, it will have a bespoke exhibition space. It was exciting to show this off the Dundee’s Design Festival team today and discuss how we can get involved with the city’s arts-based events.

Next up is to identify the best positions internally and externally for our CCTV cameras and update the build schedule to factor in new delivery times for kit from some of our subcontractors.

The ‘Hub space’ is another pivotal part of the design which will allow us to host big events in a common area. Very excited to see this part of the build come together and meet contractors to go over the electrical requirements and agree where tech should be positioned. Also pleased to watch the stair being installed – this is a big milestone for the building.

Rest of the day is spent on catching up with paperwork, creating a project file for the final build stage, listing the tasks still required to get us to completion.

My working week ends on a high note with two more site visits for potential tenants. An energy company wants to check out one of the smaller units while a new games company, is back for a second viewing. Looks promising.

Hitting Right Note

Weekends sees me either playing or rehearsing with my band Miami Vince (www.miamivince.com) – a group of musicians brought together by a love of the smooth rock and pop sounds of the 1970s and 80s.

Back on the Tools

No escape from building work … even when I’m at home! On Sunday I’m hard at work in my own house which has taken me 17 years and is still going. Rest of the day is spent catching up with work on my own company.