Understand
/
Design
/
Build
/
Certify
Who we are
Designing, building, and handing over laboratory and healthcare facilities across the UK and Europe, from feasibility to accredited, operational buildings, under a single point of accountability.
Understand
/
Design
/
Build
/
Certify
Who we are
Designing, building, and handing over laboratory and healthcare facilities across the UK and Europe, from feasibility to accredited, operational buildings, under a single point of accountability.
Our Background
About Axentia Group
Axentia has many years of experience providing clients with a one-stop solution for laboratory and healthcare facility design, build and start-up management. With laboratory and healthcare facility programmes under management ranging in value from £150,000 to £25m, across multiple sectors including forensic science, clinical diagnostics and research institutes, we have a demonstrated track record of delivery from first concept through to full accreditation.
Our philosophy is that great lab design always starts with the needs of the end user. We work with both senior stakeholders and front-line teams to fully optimise process flow and ergonomics by applying lean techniques from start to finish, providing finished lab facilities that are ready to deliver the strategic aims of the business or research organisation.
By going beyond the build phase, we have the capability and resources to deliver full start-up programmes, including supporting the client with moving/recruiting science teams and transferring or purchasing all the necessary lab equipment and instrumentation – managing the scientific accreditation processes as required. Axentia’s mode of operation is focused on partnership with the client to take away the distraction of managing complex change projects, allowing the client to fully focus on delivering their core business and operational objectives. Lab construction projects can take on many forms, including newbuild on greenfield sites, office-to-lab conversions, existing facility remodelling and ‘box within a box’ installations
Leadership
Group Leadership Team
Nigel Allman
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer
Nigel co-founded Axentia Group and leads it as Chief Executive Officer, with responsibility for strategy, M&A, finance and business development.
He brings C-suite experience from financial services, spanning banking, insurance and wealth management, where he developed expertise in governance, risk and investment.
Over the past seven years he has applied that discipline to growing Axentia in bio and life sciences laboratory construction. He shapes the commercial and delivery models behind high-specification research and clinical facilities.
Nigel works closely with clients and partners to keep capital projects commercially robust as well as technically excellent.
Simon Ward
Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer
Simon co-founded Axentia Group and serves as Chief Operating Officer.
He brings extensive experience from FMCG manufacturing, where he developed a deep understanding of high-volume, regulated production environments.
Over the past seven years he has applied that experience to delivering complex bio and life sciences laboratory builds, from early briefing and design through construction, commissioning and handover.
Simon combines C-suite operational leadership with hands-on delivery. That gives clients a clear line of sight from board-level objectives to the realities of a live lab project, where compliance and uptime are critical.
Business Development
Growth & Client Team
Sam Coates-Hammond
Business Development Executive
Sam holds responsibility at Axentia for business development, supplier outreach, sales, marketing, social media, design and event management.
He brings experience in business development from the renewable energies sector, where he strengthened expertise in stakeholder management, supplier relationships, market research, outreach, and global communications.
He also holds a Bsc in Business Technology, expanding his knowledge in digital channels, web development and more.
Sam leverages his varied skillset to outline the best fit for Axentia’s capabilities with new clients and partners, to provide the best value in future projects.
Operations
Project Delivery Team
Gary Holland
Associate
Gary brings sharp operational expertise honed in Fast Moving Consumer Goods, where he mastered balancing tight timelines, quality standards, and cost efficiency.
At Axentia, he excels at translating complex operational requirements into deliverable solutions, bridging the critical gap between stakeholder needs and design teams.
Whether optimizing laboratory workflows, managing fit-out sequencing, or keeping delivery on pace with design, Gary’s strength lies in clarity, pragmatism, and delivering on promise.
Michael Jordan
Technical Project Manager
The Landscape
Where regulation, capital and clinical outcomes meet
Both of our sectors share a defining challenge: the physical environment is not a backdrop, it is part of the product. A laboratory has to pass accreditation before it can generate a result; a clinic has to satisfy the regulator before it can see a patient. Get the building wrong and the science, the care and the commercial case all stall.
That is why we specialise. Rather than spreading across every construction market, Axentia concentrates on life sciences and healthcare — sectors where deep knowledge of the regulatory regime, the technical services and the way scientists and clinicians actually work is the difference between a facility that opens on time and one that does not.
Biotech & Life Sciences
A sector under pressure to scale fast, and compliantly
The landscape
Biotech and life sciences organisations are under sustained pressure to move from bench to accredited operation quickly, while regulatory bodies expect the same rigour they always have. Growth plans routinely outpace the space built to support them.
How We Work Here
We have been building laboratories for a wide range of life sciences companies since 2019, forensics, insect containment, diagnostics and research institutes among them, with programmes from £50,000 to £25 million across the UK and Benelux.
Healthcare
Private care is expanding and it needs the right rooms to happen in
The landscape
Private healthcare providers are expanding capacity across GP, dental and specialist clinical services, and much of that growth depends on premises that meet CQC and sector-specific standards from day one, while staying open to patients throughout the works.
How We Work Here
The same programme-management discipline applies across GP surgeries, dental practices, ophthalmic clinics and specialist consulting rooms, sequenced around a live clinical service wherever the site remains open.
One team across both sectors
The same delivery value chain, the same single point of accountability, and the same technical depth apply whether the building is a laboratory or a clinic.
About Us FAQs
What experience do you have in the technical aspects of a laboratory build?
We have been building laboratories for a wide range of companies since 2019, including forensics, insect containment and diagnostics. That breadth is what lets us fit around your requirements rather than pushing you towards a standard solution. Behind it sit two distinct kinds of experience:
- Our leadership team has a background in building and expanding factories, which gives us deep knowledge of construction, M&E and contractor coordination on complex, heavily serviced buildings.
- Our Technical Project Manager spent 12 years working in biotechnology laboratories, and translates highly technical end-user requirements into clear, actionable instructions for the construction team.
In practice that covers pressure regimes and air handling, extraction and gas distribution, containment barriers and interlocks, instrument installation and validation, and the accreditation process itself. Because the technical capability sits inside our own team, the people who set the technical brief are the people who prove it at handover.
Who works for Axentia?
Axentia is a small senior team, supported by specialist associates and strategic partners brought in for the discipline a project needs. The team is:
- Joanne Smith, Chair
- Nigel Allman, Chief Executive Officer
- Simon Ward, Chief Operating Officer
- Gary Holland, Programme Delivery Manager
- Michael Jordan, Technical Project Manager
- Sam Coates-Hammond, Business Development Manager
Consultants such as HSE advisers, quantity surveyors, M&E and structural engineers and architects are appointed and managed by us on your behalf, so you deal with the same team that delivers the work throughout.
Where do you operate?
We are based in the North West of England, at The Innovation Centre, Keckwick Lane, Daresbury, Cheshire, with strong links across Manchester and Liverpool and into the golden triangle of London, Cambridge and Oxford. We also work in Benelux, having delivered a £20 million project in Maastricht. Cross-border programmes are managed exactly as UK ones are: one Axentia programme manager accountable throughout, with local consultants and trades appointed into the structure. We will explore opportunities in territories across the UK and Ireland, and Europe. However, do not be hesitant if your project is not located in a region we haven’t worked in yet, we would still explore the opportunity on a case-by-case basis.
Types of Facility We Build
From research laboratories to clinical suites — explore the range of environments Axentia builds across both sectors.