Frankie has worked in the Manchester office market for 10 years with experience in both the investment and leasing markets. Frankie now lead’s CBRE’s Occupier Services team in Manchester, acting on behalf of office occupiers across a range of sectors.

Peter Graham is a Tax Partner at RSM, based in the Manchester office, specialising in capital tax reliefs.

He also operates nationally as RSM’s tax lead for real estate and construction, an industry he is passionate about due to the people and complex challenges involved in constructing a property. He loves nothing more than putting on his hard hat, high-vis jacket and steel-toe-capped boots to visit a client’s latest construction project.

With over 20 years of experience, Peter advises businesses on ways to optimise their overall tax position. His area of expertise is delivering tax savings to clients who incur capital expenditure on acquisition, construction, extension and refurbishment of commercial properties.

Laura Kurt is Managing Director at Fusion Group, one of the UK’s leading student accommodation developers. Since joining in 2019, she has led on brand strategy, ESG, and marketing, and now drives the development of Fusion’s product offering, overseeing operations and asset management across its growing portfolio. Laura has played a key role in shaping Fusion’s wellbeing-focused approach and has led initiatives such as its supplier framework and social impact campaigns.

As a diligent, dedicated and initiative-taking collaborator, Sunny has consistently demonstrated a high degree of versatility, supported by a career in construction and real estate which goes back over a two decades. Working his way up from being a trade operative in construction, working on complex projects across the UK to a Senior Projects Director in real estate development and investment, delivering over £400m GDV on the Paradise Birmingham development on behalf of Argent LLP.

Katie has over 25 years of experience advising on construction contracts in the real estate sector. Katie is particularly known for her work with housing providers in the UK in procuring regeneration, investment and asset management projects.

Katie is a Board Member of The Housing Forum and Chair of the Manchester Constructing Excellence Best Practice Club and regularly speaks at construction and housing conferences on procurement and construction best practice including MMC. She was part of The Housing Forum working group reporting on Stopping Building Failures as a response to the Dame Judith Hackitt review in 2018 and led the procurement working group on MMC for affordable housing developers in 2019. She contributed to the 2020 Mark Farmer and HTA report on Build Homes Build Jobs Build Innovation on the importance of structuring procurements and contracts carefully to deliver MMC projects.

Katie specialises in supporting her clients through the procurement process to select providers and drafting suitable framework agreements and delivery contracts. Katie is often called upon for her understanding of alliancing and partnering forms of contract.

She is committed to encouraging diversity within the construction sector, Katie and her team have written a construction law course being taught in schools as part of the Design Engineer Construct course which is sponsored by the construction industry and equips school leavers for careers in the sector and she supports the Save Construction Initiatiave set up to improve procurement practices for SMEs.

In March 2023 she was named Real Estate Lawyer of the Year at the inaugural Legal 500 Northern Powerhouse Awards – an achievement determined on The Legal 500’s market-leading independent research for the annual UK Solicitors guide.

Katie Saunders is a highly rated lawyer who focuses her practice primarily on non-contentious construction work. She regularly advises housing developers and local authorities on procurement strategy and construction contracts.