Quantity surveying practice Solomons Europe is forging ahead with its ambitious growth plans for the North East by opening a second office in the region.

The SME – which already has a well-established base in Hartlepool – has opened a new high spec office at Bowes Business Park, set in the grounds of Lambton Park, near Chester-Le-Street.

The new base is strategically located to serve the company’s growing roster of clients in the Tyne & Wear area and complements its existing base in Teesside.

It also provides a new flexible workspace for Solomons’ thriving North East team, which has grown from 17 to 23 in the last 12 months.

Ian Hedley, North East Director, said: “This new office places us right in the thick of the action. There’s so much activity across the North East at the moment. As an SME with a long association with the region, we’re hungry to play our role in its economic renaissance.

“We look forward to welcoming clients, existing and new, to our fantastic new home. We have high hopes it will become a firm foundation for our next period of growth in the North East.”

Founded in 1998, the Solomons has grown from two to almost 60 employees, providing specialist quantity surveying and project control support for clients in the process, engineering and energy industries.

A sizeable chunk of its growth has occurred in the North East, with past and present clients including Addison Projects, Altrad, BAE Systems, Bilfinger, Carnell, Doosan, Engenda, GE, Jacobs, Morgan Sindall, Shanahan Engineering, Siemens, and Wood.

The company is also the founding member of the TeesSMEs alliance, which brings together 10 like-minded, locally based SMEs, with the capability and capacity to deliver major projects and, at the same time, create 200 new jobs, apprenticeships, training opportunities and social impact initiatives.

Solomons’ Strategic Director, Kerry Doing, said: “Having spent my school years here, I’m really passionate about the North East region. There’s a real buzz around the place, which is fantastic.

“Learning lessons from the coronavirus pandemic, our new Lambton Park office has been specifically designed to create a spacious and relaxed workspace that encourages a more creative, informal and collaborative approach.

She added: “We’re truly fortunate to have talented and dedicated teams that plough so much energy into our sustained success. And we’ve continued to invest heavily in their development despite the challenges of the last 18 months or so, to help them be the best they can be. This means we can now be a little more daring and look beyond the usual skills sets to pull in more diverse talent to support our next phase of growth in a region that’s really going places.”

Bowes Business Park has been developed from the original Bowes House Farm buildings of Lambton Park, the historic seat of the Earls of Durham.

Solomons now boasts five offices located across its stronghold of the North. In addition to its two North East bases, it has offices in Papcastle, near Cockermouth, and Crooklands, near Kendal, in Cumbria, along with Newton-le-Willows in Merseyside.