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Darryl Easton, Managing Director and Founder, East On Commercial Interiors draws on his background in engineering, facilities management, construction and project management to realise the needs of his clients finds Sara Bean
Earlier this year, design and build company East On Interiors celebrated its 10th anniversary with the announcement of three new board appointments and the acquisition of specialist Fit Out business, Office 2 Interiors.
This milestone followed its transition to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) via its parent company, East On Projects in November 2023. The company, which has built a strong reputation for delivering complex workplace solutions, including the new Channel 4 News studios in Leeds and the renovation of ITN’s London offices and studios at the iconic Foster + Partners building in Gray’s Inn Road, was founded by MD Darryl Easton.
Early in his career Easton was an Engineering Office in the Royal Navy and recalls much of his time was spent on logistics, project management and operational management. Leaving the services to work in the City of London, he says: “I picked up the FM department and as we were a blue-chip company expanding quite quickly across the globe, I spent my time setting up offices, fitting them out, recruiting the people, building data centres and ended up running IT departments as well.”
One of the contractors approached him about a job and he moved into the construction industry, working on a variety of projects. Realising he could do it for himself, he launched a project management consultancy and took on commercial projects such as Amnesty International’s Shoreditch offices. When the pandemic struck he began specialising in media post production projects, which helped the business navigate Covid, “because journalists still have to work”.
Coming from a background that incorporates engineering, facilities management, construction and project management, Easton offers a wealth of expertise to meet the needs of his clients.
He says: “I think the beauty of being the gamekeeper first was being on the client side. I understand the stresses of not delivering projects on time or things not working when they are delivered. And while I changed sides, I always think for the client.
“We approach every project from the client’s perspective, how they’re going to design it, how they’re going to maintain it, how they’re going to use it, and how it is going to work for them when it’s completed.”
EAST ON’S PORTFOLIO
East On operates across four sectors, media, commercial interiors, living and consultancy. The media sector requires a complex blend of skills, as aside from delivering the physical builds, including M&E, services and fit outs, there is “a massive extra piece, which is the technical integration, the infrastructure that needs to go through the building, the design of the rooms, the acoustics and the lighting in the rooms”.
Says Easton: “We created the media arm specifically to target the media sector, because they don’t want generic builders, project managers or consultants. They need people that get them. It’s a very reputation driven sub sector of the world and based on the quality of your work.
“The media sector is a good example of where the client is ‘definitely King’. There is no point designing them a TV studio or a digital studio or an editing suite or a graphics suite, VFX or room, and then finding there’s no fibre connectivity.”
Where East On is best known in FM circles is in offering a range of commercial building services, encompassing everything from CAT A office build outs through to the maintenance of a building for a client. The FM services side has evolved through fit-out clients asking them to manage their premises on handover.
Says Easton: “We have a rolling programme of maintenance and refurbishment and improvement, which essentially leads itself into FM-fixed wire testing, M&E servicing, soft services and so on. I always wanted to get into the FM sector, but was slightly shy of doing so, because you see the large services companies doing it and you assume they’re doing it well, and you can’t work out how they do it so cheaply, until you lift the lid off the tin and you look inside and realise that they’re either not doing it properly, they’re not paying their contractors, or they’re having to surcharge the client significantly.”
Aside from the media and commercial portfolios, East On living takes on residential projects and East On Consultancy provides technical support for project specific, background process and engineering-based issues across a wide range of industries.
