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Thanks to all who attended the annual sold out training event at the iconic Solent University venue- The Spark. One of the SPA’s main goals is to provide high quality CPD training to its members and the excellent speakers certainly ensured they achieved that this year.

After networking over hot croissants and coffee we moved in to the Pod, an oval conference room on stilts to be introduced by SPA committee member, Allan Hilder and Paris Smith’s Nicola Davies, Solicitor.

The Chair of the Southampton Area Board of Hampshire Chamber of Commerce, Mr Sandeep Sesodia, gave a whistle stop tour of how the Chamber can help the growth of SPA member businesses.

Ian Pratt from Scott Brownrigg the designers of the Spark area and Pod provided an insight into how such an innovative design came about and how they over came the technical challenges to deliver the award-winning project.

Our very own Clive Thomson, Mediator and dispute resolution veteran followed with a captivating talk on the insights and strategy behind reaching a successful settlement. Clive did not hold back in sharing the negotiation tactics that he has learned and successfully applied to a variety of cases during his over 40 years in litigation. His talk was a strong testament to the offerings of the quality of services offered at Paris Smith and in particular our property litigation team.

The next speaker, after a quick networking break, was the Managing Director of The National Regional Property Group, Mr Allan Gordon. The Group had just completed the regeneration of the Old Fruit and Veg market in Southampton’s centre and Allan provided an insight into what it is like to manage such a large project and how to overcome the white tape and other hurdles along the way. Opening the floor up to our members, he welcomed a lot of questions about his business and his sought after opinion on the Southampton property market.

Last speaker of the day but by no means least, Tim Wright from Occuair explained to us how state of the art drones are used for surveys and thermal imagery. We were given a thorough review of Occuairs successful projects where their drone expertise helped resolve long standing disputes. In one case in particular thermal imagery revealed construction defects in a roof which were not identifiable during a traditional survey inspection.

The event closed with a networking lunch and a drone display by Occuair.