Case Study
Ian Bray
Company: GSSArchitecture
Role: Managing Partner
Ian started his career at GSSArchitecture in 1993 as a Trainee Quantity Surveyor progressing through every level of the business to his current role as Managing Partner.
Ian’s role as Managing Partner means that he is responsible for accounting, financial, and business management (including legal contractual matters) within the practice. Ian has experience in various sectors, particularly the education and commercial sectors, and he can provide advice on the various forms of procurement, contracts and professional appointments. Ian is also a member of Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
GSSArchitecture is a national, award-winning practice of architects, lead consultants and master planners. They deliver inspiring and sustainable architecture across a variety of sectors including education, healthcare, commercial and industrial, sports and leisure, arts, residential and heritage works. GSS stands out from other architectural practices as they have two further divisions: GSSIIp, which provides project management and quantity surveying services and 3DLabs, which provides high quality CGIs, visualisations and animations to bring the early architectural designs to life.
The support and advice from the MD2MD team and peer group has been invaluable to the Practice, allowing us to continue improving and modernising the working environment at GSS.
Ian heard about MD2MD when he received a letter invite and got in contact. Ian was a finance partner at the time, and was aware that he would likely be taking on the Managing Partner role in the near future. Recognising that he lacked training and experience for such a role, Ian says that MD2MD came to him at the perfect time.
Ian says that MD2MD has developed him from a boss to leader. He claims that the broad spectrum of different industries/sectors which come together through MD2MD peer groups offer him alternative ways of working and provide him with a solid support network. Ian also says that the speaker workshops cover a wide range of topics, and again are not sector specific. For this reason, being a member of MD2MD has caused Ian to be open-minded in his practice and to ‘stop in his tracks’ when ideas he would not have otherwise thought of emerge.
Ian has included members of his senior team from all of their offices in MD2MD online speaker workshops. He says that the feedback which he has received from his team regarding MD2MD has been very positive. Ian adds that he believes MD2MD has played a part in GSSArchitecture achieving gold level “investors in people” accreditation. Finally, Ian emphasises how becoming a member of MD2MD is not an overnight fix. Ian has been a member for around six years now, and expresses how it is with time and dedication given to MD2MD that he has seen the biggest, most impressive development within his own career and leadership skills.