Passion can be a powerful driving force towards achievement and for Neil Oliver it started way back in 1975 by harnessing computers to solve problems in the building environment.

Based at The Nucleus, Dartford, as the proprietor of Inani Limited, the company has chalked up some top clients since opening in 2012, including the World Bank through to UK-based international cost and construction consultancies.

Delivering niche projects to the UK, USA and Europe, the company has much more on offer than its chartered surveyor heading. It includes applied research, specialist cost and project management consultancy to construction related industries.

Mr Oliver said: “Some of my earliest involvement prior to owning my own business was developing cost modelling tools to estimate building costs from a basic set of design data.

“This led to developing tools to assist our offices with assembling bills of quantities for tendering, internal job costing and related tasks.

“Through these tasks I became the go-to person used by a local office of an international IT equipment manufacturer and found myself developing applications for weight-and-balance calculations for loading freight into aircraft, maintenance costing for local councils, cutting patterns for large logs in sawmills and other interesting tasks.”

During his time in South Africa, Mr Oliver was employed within the National Research Institute’s facilities management and planning division, examining areas of building performance improvement.

By chance he was tasked with managing the national Green Buildings programme and very quickly found himself immersed in energy, water and waste management challenges facing the owners and occupiers of existing buildings and designers of new ones.

The experience resulted in his making presentations at a number of international conferences as a member of a world-wide academic programme, promoting improvement in building performance, through design and management of those buildings.

He said: “We have many years of international experience in presenting sustainability-themed training to audiences ranging from school groups to parliamentary task teams.

“Our projects tend to be extremely varied in nature, resource intensity and timescales. Some are completed in hours, or days, yet others are open-ended with potential for long term involvement.”

The Dartford and Gravesham Business Awards are supported by the Messenger and each entrant gets a free profile in our papers and online. If you would like to enter this year’s awards, enter online at www.dgbawards.co.uk by August 19.

This year’s sponsors are: Barnes Roffe, Dartford council, Gravesham council, KM Media Group, Lloyds Bank, Thomson Snell and Passmore, University of Greenwich and JonesFM.