What made you start Arbtech?
A combination of ambition and being willing to take a risk on myself. So I did it. Nearly 20 years later, here we are.
What do you love most about the company?
The people and our very unique culture. Most of the guys and girls that have worked here for any length of time become real friends outside of work. We hang out, share the same interests, and the strength of those social bonds means everyone is always looking out for you in a genuinely altruistic way.
What do you do when you are not at Arbtech?
I fight competitively around the world. I try to fight at least a handful of times each year either Europe or the US. I have a daughter, Catarina, who is half-Brazilian and speaks Portuguese, so as well as spending time with her, I’m learning the language; unfortunately not at the same rate!
I have a property development company and so usually have at least one project on the go. I’m also a non-executive director and owner/have equity in several other businesses, so I spend some of my time with the day-to-day managers of those.
If that doesn’t take up allllll of my free time… I have a house in Deiá, so tend to spend a significant chunk of my time in Mallorca. I love to travel and eat out, and am usually up for anything fun, like rock climbing, sky diving, track days, mountain biking, walks, snowboarding, all forms of fight sports… in fact, just about anything that doesn’t involve phones, social media or TV.
What is your biggest tip to achieve the most in life?
Develop the discipline to tell the truth; to others, but especially to yourself. Once you master this skill, it is only a matter of time before you become undeniable at whatever your inner voice desires. If you’ve got that down – health is wealth.
What is the best social you’ve been on at Arbtech?
There are WAY too many to list, but if I had to pick one, Austria (Jan 2023) – the 3rd of our overseas, all-expenses-paid socials. We skied, snowboarded, did Brazilian jiujitsu, yoga and partied hard. It was an absolute vibe. How I’m going to top that, I don’t know. Las Vegas, perhaps?
Where do you want to travel to next?
Well, I’ve seen a lot of Europe, the US, South America, and some of Africa… I’ve only been east a couple of times, so maybe I’ll do something else in that hemiesphere next?
Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?
If you focus on the micro-processes, the goals take care of themselves. That’s the reason I give a massive amount of autonomy to a handful of managers and keep the structure of Arbtech as flat as I can, so we can all test and adjust across every domain in the business, all of the time.
I am ruthlessly focused on being better at what we do every single minute of the day I am at work, and so is everyone else. Our boat moves faster than others’ precisely because our managers aren’t tyrannical megalomaniacs that drown in minutiae decisions all day. If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’ll keep getting bigger/faster/stronger without any reference to a ‘plan’.
What is a goal you have for the future, in or out of work?
All the gold in the world is having untold human and capital resources put into extracting it from the ground or spends its time holed up in the most secure vaults conceived by man. It seems that when something becomes a store of value, people tend to take pretty good care of it. Who knew? So, I would like to play some part in the creation of an exchange through which financial assets are traded, but backed by natural resources, which in turn transforms them from something to be protected and enhanced by means of a powerful economic incentive. If natural capital could play a role in the way we store value (be traded and exchanged), the future of biodiversity would be much brighter than it is today.
Before that, though, I have a lot to go at while at the helm of Arbtech. In September 2024 we joined Celnor Group, backed by London-based private equity firm, Inflexion.
Watch. This. Space.
Rob started Arbtech in January, 2006. He’s been the boss for 18 years.
What Makes Arbtech Different?
Today, I am CEO of (by any objective measure) the leading ecological consultancy in the UK: Arbtech. In 2024, over 10,000 people just like you trusted Arbtech to take complete ownership of their ecology and biodiversity net gain issues on their site. The number of planning refusals? A handful, mostly related to the type of project we tried to support on that site, rather than anything we could or should have done differently. The number of EPS licences we applied for that were refused? We’ve had one in the last decade.
Why is this? It’s because we are one of the very few consultancies to have a strongly differentiated offering: Unlike most of our ‘we’ll do anything as long as you’re paying us’ competitors, we only undertake planning-related tree, ecology and BNG surveys; assuring you of our commitment to providing an unmatched depth of planning-related expertise, miles faster than anyone else. You can find out more about us here.
