20 Years of Arch Forum - Where and How it all Started
It is like yesterday. In December 2000, I received news from my boss then at Construction Services Ltd, that effective January 2001 we will be paid for the work done per project, basically what you would call a “pay as you go” contract. This meant that unlike before, when I took a salary home every month, in this coming year if a month ended without me doing anything, I would be taking nothing home. Everything about this was wrong, I thought. The fact that there would be months I would go home empty handed was inconceivable. The timing was wrong because I had just gotten married.
So I sat down with my boss, Stephen Luswata and said to him, how about me setting up my office and do your work as and when required but from my own offices. That will allow me to do other assignments and increase my income in case there is not a lot coming from you. He did not object.
But I had no furniture and decided to push for some more. Sir, I don’t have any furniture, how about if I took some of the furniture here to set up my office? His response was again positive. That is how Kiggundu and Partners was set up in January 2001 at the VIMA House in Bukoto Nsimbiziwoome. I opened my office with one member of staff, Maureen Nanyonga who was my assistant, the receptionist, tea girl, cleaner etc. That year, I got my first and last assignment from my former employers – Construction Services Ltd. It was the design and construction supervision of the Kiboga District Administration building.
Later in 2001, through my own networks and contacts, my small inexperienced firm got an assignment to design and supervise the construction of the new Rwenzori Beverages Ltd offices and factory in Namanve. To this day, I am thankful to Mr. Mahmood Somani, who took a leap of faith by entrusting me with his dream - to make Rwenzori the premier mineral water company in Uganda and beyond - purely on the basis of what I told him and not based my firm’s experience because there was none.
The fees offered by Mahmood were peanuts, but his assignment later provided our firm an opportunity to do a bigger and better paying job – The expansion of Kinyara Sugar Works.
In November 2002, still unstable and not sure of my steps, I saw an advert in the papers from the Ministry of Education seeking to employ a Senior Architect. I decided that this was an opportunity to get employed in the public sector – something I had always wanted to try out but had never got an opportunity. In the same year, I was talking to Robert Komakec and a couple of other about joining me because I believed that single person practices had no future. Although I was talking to other architects, Robert was my priority because I had worked with him at Construction Services Ltd and I had just concluded a successful collaboration with him when I sub-contracted him to do some of the work for the Rwenzori assignment. As fate would have it, the two other architects declined joining me for reasons I will never know and Robert accepted.
As soon as Robert accepted to work with me to create an architectural practice, the Ministry of Education got in touch with me in December of 2002, to say that I had been selected as their most suited candidate and would like me to join the Ministry as the Senior Architect effective January 2003. I relayed the news to Robert and although he did not say it, he must have asked himself why I even bothered asking him to join me.
At the time, we had just gone through the process of approving the name, because I thought it wise to drop the name Kiggundu and Partners. My long-time friend, Louis Ssemakula worked with me at the time and I had entrusted him with working on the paper work needed to register the new firm.
In my conversation with him, I convinced Robert that I saw my joining the Ministry in the role of a Senior Architect as an opportunity for our firm to get some jobs from the ministry. Although, I had no idea how this was going to happen and it actually never came to pass, I strongly believe that my short stint with the MoES was the foundation of the solid relationship that has existed between the Ministry and Arch Forum since 2005.
My employment was very challenging but also frustrating in so many ways. Having come from the private sector where I had been employed since leaving the University, I found the ministry’s ways of working sluggish, bureaucratic and inefficient. I resigned from the Ministry after one year and elected to return to our nascent practice. In January 2003, I reported to Arch Forum Ltd as an employee and Director. I devoted all my energy to building and growing Arch Forum and the rest as they say is history.
Throughout my life, I have made many mistakes, apologised for some where the opportunity arose and embarked on corrections. I am very far from perfect and full of so many imperfections, but the one thing I know I have in plenty is confidence. I don’t fear to fail and because of my confidence, I have attempted so many things, some of them futile.
I got up every day from January 2003, with a belief that if we build it, they will come. I believed then and to this day, that the only way an architectural practice can advertise itself to new clients is by bidding for their jobs, even when the firm does not meet the requirements set forth for participation in the process. That is how I started bidding for jobs in 2003, that were beyond our capacity.
In 2004 after many such failed attempts, one of them spectacularly embarrassing with UNEB, we got shortlisted for a European Union funded project that was being jointly managed by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance. The proviso was that we had to prove at the submission of the bidding documents, that we have got the financial capacity. Of course we did not, but for me it getting on the shortlist, was the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
I thought over the new challenge that I was now faced with – financial capacity and came up with a solution. I needed to speak to one of the old people/firms in the business who had not been shortlisted to come and join us. After carefully reviewing the alternatives available to me, I approached Eng. Kagga who at the time served with me on the Makerere College School Old Students Association executive committee.
I managed to convince Eng. Kagga to come and associate with us as the lead consultants. I told him as frankly as I could that we had been shortlisted but we do not have the financial capacity and experience required. I also told him that my team and I had the technical ability to execute the assignment because we had handled many assignments of a similar nature where we had been employed. I added that all I needed is for Kagga and Partners to associate with us as the Lead Consultant and if we win the bid, then the execution would be left to us. This was very risky business for me because, as you may be aware, all payments are made to the Lead Consultant and here I was asking someone to be the lead and receive all the money on our behalf while it will be us to get down into the trenches.
Being the professional he is, Eng. Kagga accepted to lead us but also said that his firm will be doing all the engineering and quantity surveying work, while we looked after the architectural and land surveying work. In addition, Kagga and Partners were also going to be responsible for the technical oversight and coordination of the assignment. No objection from me. We won the tender and it was successfully executed. That was the beginning of our relationship with the government of Uganda and most notably the MoES as our major client. This was at the end of 2004.
Sometime in the middle of 2005, I received a call from someone who by all accounts sounded British and he was looking for our offices. I directed him and he came over. Mr Gordon Johnson was a humble but serious looking man and when he walked into my humble offices that had now moved to Plot 103, Bukoto Street, I felt a bit intimidated. I had no idea why he was there or who had given him my telephone number.
After exchanging the obligatory formal greetings, Gordon went straight to the point and announced that he wanted to confirm if we were the architects for the new facilities for Rwenzori Beverages Ltd in Namanve. I answered in the affirmative. He asked me how long we had been in business and I told him 5 years. At that moment, I had already convinced myself that in order for Arch Forum Ltd to sound like a serious practice with some level of experience, I had to include the two years (2001-02), I had worked alone as Kiggundu and Partners. In fact it was this information that I had so shrewdly packed as a change of name that helped to get us on the short list for the EU job, otherwise we would not have met the requirement of having been in operation for at least 3 years.
After a series of questions and a walk around our offices, Gordon told me that he was the Production Manager for Kinyara Sugar Works Ltd and that they intended to put up a new office block, expand the factory and build new housing for management staff. He added that my name had been recommended to him by a couple of people and that he would be getting back to me. He got back with good news and in 2006 we commenced the assignment for Kinyara Sugar Works.
With the two major contracts - one from MoES/MoF and another from Kinyara Sugar Works - we attained some level of stability. I now diverted my energy towards building systems for the practice and left my colleague to be in charge of the quality of our work. With time, I concentrated on Practice and Project Management which involved the day to day management of the firm, coordination of all assignments and contract administration. I also continued to work on business expansion while Robert was largely responsible for the design of what came out of our offices.
In 2008, I left for UK for my postgraduate studies in Construction Management. Robert was now in charge of running the practice and ensuring that we produced good quality work. This was inevitably too much on him and we looked for ways of relieving some of the pressure. I got in touch with an old classmate Godfrey Songa and he confirmed that he was available. Godfrey was the right fit because he had the experience and had studied with both Robert and I. At first he joined us an employee, and after about a year, we offered him an opportunity to join us as a partner, which he gladly accepted.
Since 2010, the three of us have worked to grow this practice and make it one of the best in Uganda. We believe that we are achieving that in a slow but sure way with every little step that we take. Happy 20thanniversary to Arch Forum Ltd.
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