Three months after relocating to their new premises in the newly completed building that represents phase 2 of the redevelopment of NCGM, we have been asking traders how the facilities have been treating them so far. Here are the thoughts of Rick Harris of IA Harris.

“There are three partners in the business and we are all approaching retirement age,” says Rick, himself aged 58. “So if we’re totally honest, we didn’t really want to go through a move. But we had the choice of closing the business or going for it and we decided there was more to be done yet. The investment was high, but now that it’s done, we’re seeing the benefits straight away.

“We went bigger, but I think it’s been worth the additional cost,” he added. “We have the capacity to do more business and our main objective has always been to ensure we can give the customers the best level of service we possibly can – we can improve that here. It’s a lovely, modern environment to work in. It all feels more spacious; we’ve got a lot more room to move around. We were tripping over each other at times in the old units and we’re definitely more efficient now. The kit runs so much better, it’s nice and clean and tidy and there are no drafts in the offices, so we don’t need the fan heaters any more.”

IA Harris had moved as a business before, but never to brand new units, and with hindsight, Rick says they perhaps could have done a few things differently. “The hardest thing was that it’s really difficult to visualise the space you have until you’re actually here. But the last few years have shown us that we are more than capable of adapting and changing things quickly if we feel the need to. My advice to anyone who has yet to move is to plan ahead – we went through 25 versions of the plan, but that was absolutely necessary.

“All in all, we haven’t had many of the issues that I thought we might and in the run up to Christmas it all worked well. I guess we’ll see over the next few months how things turn out, but so far so good. I really think it’s all for the better.”