PFK Accountants

The move by leading chartered accounting and business advisory firm PKF from Greenhill Road to new offices in Frome Street, in the CBD, was met with enthusiasm by the firm’s staff.

It was an enthusiasm shared by PKF partner Kyffin Thompson who orchestrated the move into two floors of the former Hewlett Packard offices, and who discovered a number of benefits beyond the expected commercial ones.

“Keeping skilled, high quality people is very hard for most accounting firms,” he says, “but by providing a really good working environment such as we have now, where we can balance work with lifestyle, we have really improved our position.

“A number of our clients are in the City and now we find we bump into them in the street.”

While George Yatzis, PKF’s manager Business Services, had to give up his under-storey carpark, he was happy to use one of the six car parks within walking distance of the new office.

“I really like the vibe in the City, its atmosphere,” George says. “It provides much more incentive to go outside the office, and in this business it’s important to network, so it makes it much easier to meet people. It also makes it easier for people from the office to go out together, which makes for better relationships all round.”

Senior accountant Carolyn Nuske, who had previously worked in the City, says she had really missed having easy access to public transport and the availability of nearby services – both professional and personal, such as having nice places to go for lunch.

The move was driven largely by PKF’s extraordinary growth, with a 49 per cent increase in business over the past three years.

Its Adelaide office was established in 1969 and has since grown to eight partners and 65 employees offering an extensive range of specialist chartered accounting and business advisory services. Expansion in the past three years has seen the number of employees increase by 35 per cent and six additional directors appointed.

“Our new office is bigger and admittedly a little more expensive,“Kyffin says,“ but we expect to benefit financially in the long term. We’re far more visible here, with naming rights for the building, and very accessible to our clients. Already we’ve found we are increasingly on the radar of big client companies.”

Fast Facts

● Relocated to the City in 2005
● Major workforce growth in past 3 years
● Improvement to visibility and profile