HND Business Students Impress Ramsbury Estate

Jun 06 2019

HND Business Studies students at New College were recently given the opportunity to be involved with preparing and delivering two business proposals, for the Ramsbury Estate Ltd. The students originally met with Farm Manager, Duncan Lee and Assistant Estate Manager, Mary Askew, who gave them a tour of the grounds and took them to two areas of the farm that they wanted to make changes to. The first was the old barn, a listed property in disrepair and the second was a large farm equipment container and surrounding land.

The students paired up and started working on their proposals for the Management Team, both teams worked on their proposals for two months and came up with carefully considered pitches. Chloe and James, who were working on the proposal for the old barn, came up with the idea to split the barn into two properties for short term rental. Their pitch and proposal documents included floor plans, quotes for works, potential earning and break even points, as well as all of the research they had conducted about renting and buying trends in the area.

Chloe and Toby worked on a proposal for the equipment container and land. Their idea was to keep the existing container structure, but use the space for storage rental pods for the local and extended communities. Their proposal was concluded after careful market research in the Ramsbury area of the need for storage. It included security quotations, plans for layout of the storage pods, demand in the area, nearest competitors, cost of developing the storage unit and surrounding areas, break even and profit analysis. Both proposals were incredibly detailed and the students were sympathetic to the estate’s needs and requirements.

This project is just the start of an exciting collaboration between New College and the Ramsbury Estate and the same proposal task is set to take place next academic year. Gillian Keir, Business Lecturer, said: “The benefits of this partnership were two-fold. Ramsbury Estate got two viable business diversification ideas presented in an extremely professional manner and the students got a ‘real' experience. The students used all of their business acumen to conduct market research, gain costings and produce project plans, including financial forecasting and break even analysis. The pitch part of the proposal was really the end result of months of detailed work. The HND students met the requirements of the brief in such a professional manner.”