Spotlight on… Edward Orr, Group Development Director at Generator Group

Every edition, Birketts focuses the spotlight on one of our contacts or clients. In this edition we speak to Edward Orr who recently celebrated his 15-year anniversary with Generator Group. Earlier this year, Edward was promoted to Group Development Director as well as still heading up the strategic land division at the company.

You have an MA in Land Economy from Cambridge – have you always had an interest in land development and if so what sparked that interest?

Growing up I wanted to be a vet like James Herriot or run a zoo like Gerald Durrell! I almost applied for veterinary college, however in the end I realised there was no guarantee I would be working with large animals and couldn’t envisage a future prescribing flea medicine for cats and dogs. A school trip to the Docklands in the early 90s is the first time I remember becoming interested in property development. We were lucky enough to be taken to the top of the recently completed One Canada Square and the aerial view of the ongoing regeneration was fascinating. I might still buy a zoo one day though…

Ed, you joined Generator at the start of 2007. Over the last 15 years, how has the development market changed between then and now and how has Generator positioned itself in the market over that period?

Life as an SME developer has always been tough, however the barriers to entry for smaller firms have increased significantly even over my career, whether it be access to development finance on reasonable terms; delays in the planning system impacting on the time cost of money; or the steadily increasing costs and red tape involved in planning applications themselves.

Generator takes on sites where innovation creates value. This is often via the planning system but also through solving technical or legal obstacles and the way in which we structure and finance our deals. As market challenges have increased, we have diversified our portfolio, investing in strategic land and commercial schemes, alongside our traditional, residentially led development sites. We also have a long history of joint ventures with a wide range of stakeholders, including landowners, banks, RSLs and fellow developers, tapping into resource and expertise outside of our core team. This is a key direction of growth for the business and led to the creation of subsidiary, Generator Partnerships, last year.

The way that that most of us work has changed forever as a result of the pandemic with working from home or hybrid working now commonplace. How did you find working remotely?

One of our industry’s greatest strengths is its social side and without this part of the job, like many people, I found lockdown very tough. More by luck than judgement, we had invested heavily in conferencing technology in early 2020, having relocated our head office from Liverpool Street to Chelmsford, with a number of our staff still based in London. We’d also had a bit of practice with unusual working arrangements the year before, with me having spent some time working remotely from San Francisco, where my (now) wife was doing a fellowship as an anaesthetist. As a result, thankfully the business was in a fairly good position from an infrastructure and systems perspective when the pandemic struck.

Throughout the various lockdowns we worked hard to maintain a sense of team spirit and cohesion, with a rotating weekly blog written by staff members, Friday drinks, and various online events, including a murder mystery, escape room and virtual Christmas party.

Have you ever come across anything unusual or funny during a site visit?

During the 2008 financial crisis we worked closely with a number of lenders on stressed and distressed assets, often injecting equity alongside them to facilitate a work out. One memorable project in Kensington, where the bank had taken possession, involved a two-storey excavation across the entire back garden of the property. The architect’s drawings showed plans for a full height shark tank (complete with sketches of sharks) and a system of conveyor belts for selecting a car from the basement garage to be automatically delivered to the car lift. Another scheme had a completed concrete frame where you had to turn sideways to fit down the corridor and drain covers set in the ground, with no drains underneath them. I’ve also had a curse put on me by a lady who objected to us acting for the receivers and had to pursue a chap across a field who disappeared over the back fence, when I knocked on the front door to take possession of a listed mansion in Somerset.

You were recently promoted to Generator’s Group Development Director. How has this changed what you do on a daily basis?

Much of my day-to-day role has remained similar, overseeing our existing projects and the assessment of new opportunities. The main change has been an increased involvement with the future strategic direction of the company and how we intend to grow the business. We are in discussions on a number of exciting new initiatives and partnerships and see strong growth opportunities in the market as we emerge from the pandemic.