Why employ a Heritage Consultant?

When clearly laid out, an understanding of what makes a place important helps clients and design teams protect, enhance, and use what a heritage building has to offer to unlock the potential for informed, ambitious, innovative and sustainable change.

That’s where a Heritage Consultant comes in. But what do they actually do and what benefit can they bring to a project?

Purcell’s Associate Partner Steve Phillips talks us through why engaging a Heritage Consultant early on in a project will save you time and money throughout various stages of development.

First of all, what is a Heritage Consultant?

Heritage Consultants research and articulate the significance of a historic place; the people and things that have shaped it and the ideas and beliefs that bring public benefit for today and future generations.

What does a Heritage Consultant do?

A heritage consultant will survey and research a building or site, working with the client and stakeholders to fully understand the site’s history, current position, and future challenges.

The report tools that follow are bespoke, designed to empower clients to appropriately manage heritage assets in a way that is financially, operationally and environmentally sustainable. Thus, protecting the long-term future for significant places as valuable assets to their owners and the communities they serve.

What is the benefit of employing a Heritage Consultant?

Historic buildings are of most value when they are socially and culturally relevant. Coupled with fabric upgrades necessary to bring heritage assets in line with modern accessibility and sustainability standards, these buildings often need to be adapted and modified.

These high impact interventions can be done with least harm and for the greatest return when the building is fully understood, and that’s where having a Heritage Consultant engaged will add value. They do a lot of work beforehand to really understand the building as well as the proposed uses, and work with clients on sensitive interventions that will provide maximum benefit in relation to their end goals be it income, community impact amongst others.

So do Heritage Consultants simply research the building?

Not at all — the process of obtaining approvals can be complex, and a heritage consultant works with the owner to achieve those approvals by working to understand their building objectively, and guide changes that can work to the situation; their research and assessment of what is important informs their advice, helping shape realistic proposals and obtaining successful approvals.

A Heritage Consultant brings expert understanding to maximise the likelihood of obtaining consent, setting out clearly how the significance of the heritage asset can be protected or enhanced within development plans.

At what stage should you engage a Heritage Consultant on a project?

In our experience, it is never too early to appoint one, and the later one is appointed, potentially the less effective the appointment will be, and past decisions may not be able to be undone. Engaging a Heritage Consultant at a project’s inception is proven to be effective by unlocking potential and enhancing the project outcome.

As soon as you engage one, you can immediately benefit from the added value they can bring to your heritage project, and through their support across planning and shaping the approach to your project, this will help avoid both abortive works and mitigate conflict in later stages of a project.

What lasting value does a Heritage Consultant bring to a project?

A heritage consultant offers different values, influence and impact across every stage of a project. Whether it’s to help you to understand the place, deliver technical excellence, or ensure you leave long lasting positive impacts on the communities that stand to benefit. It is clear that, far from being a small corner of the architectural world, conservation architecture, heritage retrofit and adaptive reuse are rapidly becoming mainstream practices that shape the future of our historic built environment.

Conservation architecture is more than just restoring the fabric of a building. Implementing a robust conservation philosophy across every stage of your project is a regenerative approach — by preserving or reimagining the asset, and embedding it back into the community, you are safeguarding the financial, cultural and environmental sustainability of your project for generations to come.