After helping Ken Shuttleworth set up the award-winning Make Architects in 2004, Justin Nicholls finally took the step of founding his own practice, Fathom Architects, in 2016. Justin explains how starting his own business has been a lifelong ambition. “It was probably a couple of years before I left Make that I really seriously thought about starting my own practice and I think you get to that moment where this has been niggling away in my mind since I was a child – I’ve got to do something about it soon, I've found lots of excuses along way not doing it yet - and if I don't do it now I'm going to be too old – it’s going to be too late”.

Actioning that lifelong dream, Justin embarked on creating a business plan. “Two years before we started Fathom, I sat in my father-in-law's basement in Devon, one Easter, and I spent three days non-stop, apart from a bit of sleep, writing a business plan. I had a copy of the Financial Times How To Set Up Your Own Business, I had a copy of the RIBA How To Set Up A Practice and merged what I’d learnt from those two books and put them into a business plan. It enabled me to put a load of stuff on paper that was already crystallised in my mind - because you think “oh my God I don't know how to set up a business” and when you go through that sort of list of things you’ve got to write down you suddenly realise that 80% of them are already sorted. So on that day – 5/6 years ago - I was like “I want a studio at London Bridge” and here we are you know seven years later sitting in a studio at London Bridge. That made it much less overwhelming because suddenly there’s only 20% left - this last 20% is really about your brand and what you’ve got to offer. I think at that point you then need to bring in other people and bounce those ideas around”.

An important part of Justin’s plan was finding the right team. Justin sought the help of Tom Shard, with a background in filmmaking and advertising, Tom knew what was required to create a successful business. “Having someone there that had run businesses before was really important and meant that Jonathan Mitchell (founding partner) and I could then focus on how we do the architecture - and Tom could focus on making sure the business worked properly. I think that's been a real strength - on one level it's about running a business but actually on another level it's about Toms background in other creative industries. Having someone with experience of setting up teams and running businesses”.

Fathom’s innovative business model involves collaborating with many specialists and experts - this has evolved into a highly successful collaborative network. “We have a core team of people who are generally quite senior - you know if you look at the sort of experience they have, we then have key experts that we bring in. We have Laura Maria-Morales on interior design who used to run a team of 35 people at Fosters. We have Adrian Gainer on laboratory planning who is also amazing. What we are trying to communicate to the outside world is this is about people. It's exactly where that kind of ad agency/film production background of Tom's comes from. It’s like - okay we're going to film Star Wars - who are the best people to do Star Wars? They are probably completely different to the people you’d choose to do Peaky Blinders! That was the thing that really drove my interest in that structure – it’s that you get the right people in to do the right job”.

After launching 2016, Justin had his first project in no time. “The first project came in as a phone call probably 4 hours after we started which is weird and completely unheard of. There was a huge amount of work in kind of marketing, PR, new business. Obviously, most of that is business done with people who know you – so talking to them, working out what their needs are. We also spent a lot of time with dn&co who did our branding - who are fantastic at really kind of eking out of us what we were going to be about and are about now. Tom and I spent about six months trying to work out what we were about and I think we got it down to A4 four sides! So, we gave that to dn&co and they were fantastic at coming up with the name and really defining that kind of USP and messaging”.

Fathom Architects established a focus on complex briefs and sensitive sites. “Those were two things that we recognised we had a sort of skill in and we brought together. Which we thought were two things you wouldn't necessarily bring together. One is the ability to work on complex projects and I think that comes from being quite rigorous and logical in our thinking - probably goes back to foster days of using the diagram to really kind of flush out problems. On the completely other end of the scale is sensitive sites, both Jonathan (Mitchell) and I studied at Bath - we actually lived on a World Heritage site for four years each (sadly in different decades) and you have an understanding and the sensibility of working in conservation areas, with listed buildings, and we very much see them as a positive attribute rather than a constraint. I think what's unusual is having the ability to work in that logical rational way and be sensitive at the same time and that's really worked fantastically for us. At the same time we do like nice straight forward projects though!”.