Our history

Established 1999

Hargreaves Design Group was established in 1999 when Daryl Hargreaves & Warren Van Damme formed a partnership and began operating from an office in Berwick, Victoria as Harvan Design. Warren had a commercial  background & Daryl a residential, which worked well in covering a wide spectrum of projects. Growing quickly to 5 staff within 1 year & up to 11 staff within 4 years meant learning new management skills as the project list evolved.

Focus on the Builder Market

Whilst we did a number of large commercial projects the bulk of the initial workload was a result of successfully marketing ourselves to the larger volume builders. In 2003 we were producing in excess of 100 working drawings every week for builders such as Metricon, Henley Properties, Domain Homes, Pivot Homes, Northridge Homes, Freedom Homes, SJD Homes, Kialla Homes, Carlisle Homes, Porter Davis Homes & P & J Constructions, just to name a few.

A rethink &  a relocation

At the start of 2004 the company had a rethink about re positioning ourselves in the residential market. Warren Van Damme left the partnership & Daryl Hargreaves took over as the Managing Director. The office was moved to 9 Old Trafford, Berwick & scaled down operations in an effort to service the individually designed boutique housing market rather than the high turnover, high pressure, repetitive volume market. While we maintained a couple of the quality builders which we still service, we shifted focus into more individual client based design.

Pakenham Office Opened 2015

We operated from 9 Old Trafford , Berwick for 11 years & the growth in both the quality of projects produced & the recognition of the Harvan Design name has been quite humbling. The move in April 2015 to our Pakenham office led to a doubling in staff levels & huge growth in our capacity & experience.

Ringwood East Office opened 2018

In 2018 we acquired Ace Drafting in Ringwood East from Wayne Hansen. Ace Drafting was established in 1945. Ace Drafting specialised in renovation & extension work as well as servicing the boutique housing & medium density developers market.

WA Bunbury Office opened 2019

In September 2019 we acquired Veen’s Design Group in Bunbury from Roger & Margo Veen. Veen’s Design is a building design company with 40 years history of servicing the commercial, residential & government of WA’s South West Region. Over the years they have won numerous state & national design awards.

Hargreaves Design Group is born 2020

From January 2020 the 3 existing trading names of Harvan Design, Ace Drafting & Veen’s Design were rolled into the ‘Hargreaves Design Group’ to re-badge all of our offices & centralise systems. All 4 offices now work off one Cloud Server & work sharing means we always have increased capacity to accommodate any workflow increases.

Hobart Office acquired 2023

In April 2023 we acquired Smeekes Drafting in Hobart from Roland Smeekes. Smeekes Drafting is a well-established building design company with 30 years of history servicing the residential and commercial needs of Hobart and it’s surrounding regions, including all the way up the East Coast of Tasmania. They have won state and national design awards and we are proud to carry on their service tradition.