Northern Ireland's Industrial Development Board has not wasted a minute in seeking a share of the much-touted "peace dividend" that is expected to be earned over the next few years as the Belfast Agreement is worked through.
Last week, a brace of IDB officials, accompanied by a group of local developers, held a presentation to unveil Northern Ireland's call-centre initiative, its latest effort to tempt jobs and investment funds to the area.
Six private developers, who between them have 255,000 sq ft of suitable call-centre space available, are seeking tenants in partnership with the IDB. The move, the first of its type by the IDB in London, represents a strategy shift by the British Government quango in its efforts to attract inward development.
"The old way the Northern Ireland IDB used to operate was to construct `advance factories'," says Alan Gillespie, managing director of investment bank Goldman Sachs and chairman of the IDB. Public funds were used to build industrial sheds in the sometimes vain hope that some manufacturing company would want to operate them, he says. "They had a whole shelf full of these things. Now what the IDB has is a land bank."
Employers prepared to open plants in the North may select a site, available for sale at a discount, and obtain private sector finance for development. The IDB will later make available various funds, such as training and employment grants, but public money is no longer used to take development risks, he says.
Call centres, he says, are a special case as `they have been a dramatic source of new employment." Employers first tried to hold down costs by siting their call centres in Basildon, Essex, and then they realised they had to move further out to places such as Cardiff and Bristol. Now, it's Northern Ireland, says Mr Gillespie.
Jeremy Brookes, head of the call-centre team at chartered surveyors GVA Grimley and an adviser to the IDB, says the entire call-centre industry is changing rapidly. As an economic matter alone, call centres make sense for Northern Ireland, he says. Salaries in Northern Ireland are significantly below those in most of the UK, particularly in areas such as Sunderland, Glasgow and Bradford, which have already become saturated with call centres.
Salaries are roughly 58 per cent of employers' costs, so whatever other considerations companies may have, it is always worthwhile to move to the centre with the highest number of skilled staff at the lowest cost. Information technology and telecommunications comprise 35 per cent of costs, while property overheads only account for 7 per cent. "But in the end, it's the property costs which drive the decision," says Mr Brookes.
Rents per square foot in Northern Ireland are sterling £6£10 a sq ft, according to Mr Gillespie, against sterling £10-14 a sq ft in other call-centre centres. "But developers hoping to cash in on a call-centre boom in Northern Ireland have to understand how the industry is changing," Mr Brookes says.
"In the past, people have thought of call centres as telephonists in chicken coops," he says. Basically, call centres were constructed as large sheds, little different from those used for retail warehousing. "The whole marketplace is changing. It is moving towards total customer care," says Mr Brookes. That means that call centres will require better trained - and probably more expensive - staff. A far better work environment will also have to be provided.
"You will have to provide staff with break-out areas," he says. Out of every hour spent at work, the average call-centre employee will spend 45 minutes at a work station and the remainder having a cup of coffee or a break.
Typically, developers have provided 60 sq ft of space for each call-centre worker against 100 sq ft of space for a typical office worker. However, break-out areas add a further 60 sq ft for each worker at call centres and too many facilities are simply inadequate for the needs of modern employers.
Buildings have to be larger, have higher levels of air-conditioning and be designed internally to absorb sound. Metal ceilings should be abandoned in favour of mineral fibre and soft furniture and partitions are desirable.
The IDB's role, Mr Gillespie says, is to help parts of the private sector understand what each one needs and fill only the gaps, say with sales of land at sub-market prices or by providing training grants where necessary. But arguably, hefty pump priming from the taxpayer is no longer needed.
Northern Ireland property values have risen sharply in the past three years since the first IRA ceasefire was announced. Private developers, such as Welsh-based TBI, the property-to-airports group which announced plans for a sterling £100m development around Belfast airport last autumn, have helped. Those sorts of developments, says Phillip Rooney, head of the property practice at solicitors Dibb, Lupton Allsop, have raised the stakes for many, giving even greater incentives to local residents to support a peace agreement.
"As well as the residents, there are all these investors who want peace," he points out.
