History

​

vkhp-consulting is the amalgamation of three long established practices, being Michael van Klaveren Associates, Durleys and Douglas Rose and Partners.

​

Michael established his practice from home in 1982 and by 1983 had moved into offices in Dorking, Surrey to cater for an increased workload and the necessity to employ his first staff. As a result of continued expansion, a second office was opened in Sussex in the early 1990's to cater for increasing workloads along the south coast.

​

Our third office was opened in Tunbridge Wells by merging with John Holden of Durleys in 1999 with the practice at the time being renamed van Klaveren Holden Partnership.

​

Expansion continued with the take-over in January 2003 of Douglas Rose and Partners who had established in 

Tunbridge Wells since formation in 1965. The practice was renamed at that time vkhp-douglas rose and brought together combined expertise from all the offices enabling a wider range of civil and structural engineering services to be offered to our clients.

​

April 2008 saw the formation of a new limited company, vkhp consulting limited, retaining all our staff and offices. This restructuring paved the way for future expansion with additional directors and shareholders.  We survived the 2008-2014 recession thanks in part to many longstanding loyal clients, and with all our key staff and offices intact.  2016 and 2017 has seen us further expand with several key senior appointments enabling us to continue to provide our consultancy services to the highest standards. 

​

The whole world encountered very challenging times which eventually included the UK in March 2020, with confirmed cases of Covid-19 having been recorded.  The Pandemic immediately resulted in a lockdown scenario and was a shock to the system to many and eventually forced a different way of thinking and the undertaking of how we do things, both personally and professionally.  This event was truly unchartered waters for most, and as we all worked our way through, we were forced to develop new ways of working. 

 

Trying to continue in our personal as well as professional lives, different techniques and ways of working as well as technology were looked upon and embraced when previously may not have been a consideration.  As the country and other parts of the world started coming out of lockdown and the Covid Pandemic, we saw ourselves working in different ways that included a larger inclusion of technology in the forms of video conferencing and meetings, as well as remote working where practicable. 

 

Fortunately, our flexibility and openness to embrace all that was needed to keep functioning and improving ourselves and the way we worked proved beneficial to vkhp and saw us continue throughout these troubled times and emerge at the other end far better than most. 

 

Within the reviews and practices undertaken above on how to maximise as well as increase productivity of the services we provide, it was subsequently agreed to be most beneficial for all our employees to be together in one engineering hub.  The decision was therefore made to close the Tunbridge Wells office and relocate colleagues into the Dorking office which was finally undertaken in June 2022.

 

Michael and his co-equity Directors have long been planning for the continuation of vkhp, and it was originally thought that an MBO would have happened sooner, but Covid and restructuring meant that this was inevitably delayed.  However, a successful completion of the intended MBO occurred on 01st June 2023, with Fritzgerald Pereira as the newly appointed Managing Director and Harvey Morris as Finance Director.  Going forward the Directors of vkhp are Fritz and Julian Klippenstein as the main engineering/technical Directors, and as previously stated, Harvey as Finance Director, all of whom have been working within vkhp at a senior management level for a significant total number of years. 

 

Michael, Chris and Karen continue to work very much as they have been and will do so for the foreseeable future, acting as consultants to the company as opposed to Directors.  All three will continue to aid the company as they have done for all these years with their extensive professional advice, albeit in a reducing capacity over time.