Abu Dhabi-based Master Developer

Stay up to date

Benjamin Walker

BSc (Hons), MRICS

Head of Project and Building Consultancy

Benjamin is a Chartered Building Surveyor bringing over 15 years of global professional experience to the Project and Building Consultancy team at Cavendish Maxwell. Over the course of his career, he has successfully advised top-tier international clients from around the world on portfolio acquisitions/disposals, lifecycle costing, technical due diligence, and building pathology, among others. He has delivered a full range of project management services including new builds, refurbishment, fit-out and alterations.

Prior to his role at Cavendish Maxwell, Benjamin headed up the building consultancy department of the New Zealand arm of a global real estate firm. He also has extensive experience in the UK and the wider Middle East, covering building consultancy services across the GCC for a variety of projects and asset classes for developers, investment trusts, local authorities and large private clients in the region. He has advised clients from China, Singapore and Australia on some of the largest property acquisitions in both New Zealand and Australia.

Being an RICS-accredited Assessment of Professional Competence (APC) assessor, Benjamin provides consistently distinguished standards of service for the company and the wider surveying profession in the UAE.

Paul Barker

BSc (Hons), MRICS

Partner, Head of Commercial Valuation

Paul has 20 years of experience in valuation and consultancy services and has worked in leading international practices across the UAE, Oman, Europe and the UK.

His professional knowledge encompasses all property asset classes including large, complex master plan developments of mixed-use properties in office, retail, industrial, leisure, hospitality and residential sectors. Paul is professionally qualified to value minerals, waste and recycling properties as well as environmental land considerations.

Paul’s client portfolio includes international and local banks, lending institutions, developers, investors, owner occupiers as well as accountants, legal firms and insolvency practitioners. As joint head of the Commercial Valuation department he is responsible for valuations of all property types. He ensures quality assurance and provides timely RICS Red Book/International Valuation Standard Council (IVSC) standard reports.

Sarah-Jane Carter

BA (Hons) DipM

Head of Marketing

Sarah-Jane joined Cavendish Maxwell in January 2020 as Head of Marketing and is responsible for the development of the marketing strategy and execution across the Middle East region. An energetic and results driven marketer, Sarah-Jane possesses a wealth of multi-channel marketing experience, within both B2B and B2C environments which she has gained over a 25 year career. Prior to joining Cavendish Maxwell, Sarah-Jane held senior marketing positions for major developers in Dubai including Emaar, Dubai Properties and Dubai Sports City. She also worked for IWG as the Regional Marketing Director responsible for the MEA and APAC regions. Before relocating to the UAE in 2005, Sarah-Jane held various management roles in public and private sector companies in the UK including ten years at Royal Mail and seven years at the Bank of America.

Sarah-Jane is a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and has a BA(Hons) Degree in Business and Marketing

P P Varghese

Partner, Strategy and Consulting

P P Varghese leads Cavendish Maxwell’s strategy and consulting team. Varghese comes with over 17 years’ experience gained through advising government, private and institutional clients on single-use, mixed-use, standalone, and master planned projects. He has been exposed to consulting and operations functions with his expertise spanning development planning and strategy, cost-benefit analysis, operational reviews and monitoring, hotel operator search and negotiations, as well as arbitration support and dispute resolution for hotel management agreements.

In his previous role, Varghese served as Partner - Real Estate Strategy and Consulting at Knight Frank Middle East. There he was responsible for advising clients on real estate development strategy, optimising department processes to enhance revenue, and developing client acquisition and retention strategies.

At Cavendish Maxwell, Varghese will lead an expert team that provides development advisory, feasibility, portfolio analysis and real estate research for all real estate asset classes and will identify new growth opportunities for the business.

Varghese is a Master of Management in Hospitality, majoring in real estate investments and finance from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, New York.