Carrig, the Dublin-based building fabric consultants specialising in stone, intend to increase their presence in the UK by opening offices in London.

Until 1999 they had offices in the UK, but the boom in Ireland together with new, tougher conservation legislation introduced in Ireland in 1999 gave them as much work as they could deal with and they consolidated in Dublin.

Not that they stopped working in England altogether. They were called in as consultants on Tate Modern and the Lloyds Register building under the direction of architect Sir Richard Rogers. They are also currently involved in a major project in Birmingham.

Nevertheless, the nine people of Carrig did not have offices in England and most of their time was spent on Irish projects, north and south of the border, like Trinity College, Dublin, and the Albert Memorial Clock in Belfast (see page 12).

They have also worked on St John\'s Cathedral in Limerick, with its 86m high tower housing a family of Peregrin Falcons that are "more protected than the tower itself", says Carrig managing director Peter Cox.

One of their most interesting projects, he says, was Ardfert Cathedral in Kerry, where they worked with Duchas, the Irish heritage body. Carrig carried out a lot of work analysing the mortar which was then reproduced by a German company.

There was more than 3,500m of pointing to be carried out as well as the repair and replacement of the local red and buff sandstone before the cathedral was opened to the public again for the first time in two centuries with the nave roofed and converted into a visitor centre.

Another of the areas in which they are involved is sustainable development and Carrig were consultants on a building in Temple Bar, Dublin (which is the creative centre of the city), where many recycled materials have been used and alternative energy sources incorporated - most noticeably to the outside world the windmill on the roof, although there are also solar panels and geothermal heaters going down into the bedrock. They calculate that a 5-6% increase in building costs is achieving an 80% reduction in running costs.

Now Carrig want to expand. "We feel we are now established in the Irish market and it should be relatively easy to hold that. We want now to re-establish ourselves in the UK," says Cox.

He believes the consultancy\'s reputation has been retained in Britain by the couple of jobs a year they have worked on in the UK. "We have now to do four or five jobs in London that should give us the impetus to come back here. We would like to find someone to join us in London. We are looking for someone established in conservation or geology."