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Press release / Bath businesses plan commercial property shake up

Press release issued on behalf of Bath-based Property Document Vault

A system expected to transform commercial property transactions has been masterminded by two Bath business owners.

The combined expertise of a Bath chartered surveyor and IT specialist means the time it takes to complete commercial property leases and sales could be halved.

“The market was in desperate need of a serious upgrade when it came to property transactions and management” explained Bath-based Jamie McNeil, chartered surveyor and cofounder of Property Document Vault (PDV).

The days of sluggish paper-based procedures are numbered thanks his work with fellow business owner Andrew Twigg.

Jamie added:   “In my experience commercial landlords and investors regularly lose thousands during the transaction process, due to completely unnecessary hold ups caused by administration.  We’ve removed this hurdle.

“Put simply, PDV is an online folder containing all the documentation ever required for a commercial building.   Anyone needing to access or change this can be granted access by the property owner.  Email and paper trails become a thing of the past.”

The two business minds first met at the Bath Business Club, a networking and referral group held each week at the rugby club.

They have designed PDV with several purposes and advantages in mind; to aid the management, letting and sale of commercial property; to better enable internal collaboration between landlord and managing agent, while aiding communication with tenants; speeding up the sale of the property by improving administration procedures and significantly reducing the purchaser’s risk of making financial losses.

Jamie predicts that the uptake of PDV will provide a catalyst to encourage further capital investment in the commercial property sector, particularly multi-let properties.

“Tenants can be provided with round the clock access to information they may need to run their business:   this represents a major time-saving advantage for landlords.  Ad hoc and regular reporting procedures between the property’s managing agent and landlord are also simplified.”

Launched this month PDV is already receiving the nod of approval from national landlords and managing agents, thanks to its time and money and energy-saving benefits.  The system is hosted on carbon neutral UK servers and is compliant with UK law.   Access is via the internet and is available globally, 24/365.

It is designed to house the complete library and history of documentation relevant to a property.   Users can store, view, share and collaborate on these; tenants and other third parties can also be allocated access rights to this material.  The use and changes to documents stored in this system can be fully tracked.

Jamie explains that in contrast to the extranet or protected online systems offered by most law firms, PDV is under the complete control of the landlord or their agent, not a third party.

PDV grants tenants read only access to operational documents such as health and safety reports, certificates, drawings, reports and budgets; landlords and managing agents can collaborate on documents virtually.  Access can also be permitted to a third party such as a potential purchaser, tenant or commercial property solicitor.

Property Document Vault is the concept of Bath-based chartered surveyor Jamie McNeil of McNeil Commercial and IT specialist Andrew Twigg of TWG Systems.  Jamie has more than 15 years experience of commercial property management and Andrew over 12 years’ IT expertise. More about PDV can be found at propertydocumentvault.co.uk