When a restaurant chain was having problems with the maintenance on its ventilation system, Paul Sutherland offered to help. Paul Braithwaite asks what happened next?
PAUL SUTHERLAND, managing director of Clearvent, is one of the best examples I have ever met of an m&e engineer who has found a niche market and carved a successful business opportunity out of it.

Two years ago, Sutherland, who is a qualified quantity surveyor, was working as a self-employed project manager of a large FMCG company working on its maintenance delivery.
The operations manager of the chain told Sutherland he was having trouble with the maintenance of the kitchen extract system.

'I thought I would help them out (as a freebie) and produced a document reviewing what the current approach was and comparing this to the requirements set out by the regulatory bodies (HVCA) and insurance companies.'

The review was well received by the operations director who offered him the contract.
Initially he started off with two lads and a van - and began by looking after the kitchen extract ventilation - a crucial part of the business. No extract fan, no food!

That was two years ago. He did this work for about six months, looking after 35 restaurants including an exclusive contract for the Wagamama chain .

'The restaurant trade is quite a close knit industry. There are only a small number of movers and shakers and the board directors of the chains all talk to each other.'

It wasn't long before Clearvent had the contract for the Strada restaurant chain, which was owned by Richard Caring, who also owns The Ivy.

In month 13, Clearvent took on the work at Carluccios, Gourmet Burger Kitchen and YO! Sushi, increasing the number of restaurants serviced to 200.

Sutherland says: 'My experience at senior level helped when talking to senior directors and this was seen as a major advantage.'

But the philosophy went deeper than that. He realised the insurers were drivers in the industry. They wanted proper maintenance because of the risk of fire, downtime or lost customer hours 'where the chains would claim from the insurers'.
Sutherland next built a website for his customers.

At the start and finish of each job, the engineer takes a photograph. When the job is finished, he uploads the pictures with a short explanation of the work carried out so that the chain or restaurant involved can log in and see, for instance, that the motor which was broken has been fixed or a fan has been replaced.

Interestingly, patterns are emerging. If a particular piece of kit is breaking down regularly then this shows up quite quickly.

And this means that if a product is unreliable, then it can be changed for one from a different manufacturer, completing the design, install, operate and review cycle.

Information is all

'We now have quite a sophisticated information system.'

A different part of the website is used by the engineers to find out where they are going or order parts. It sounds like a very slick system.

'The website reduces the need to come into head office for instructions; parts can be picked up from wholesalers near to the job. They all have cameras and PDAs. The time sheets are online; all the vans are tracked so there is very little management time wastage. It is a very efficient model.'

So, at what point did Sutherland stop maintaining restaurants and start managing the company full time?
'Only four months ago,' he laughs. This was in month 24.
And this was about the time that Clearvent started to build its own restaurant ventilation systems because 'we discovered so many different problems with the maintenance of existing systems and we had so much useful data'.

In fact, he believes that knowledge is all-important.
'We had all the information so we could figure out what was a good design and what wasn't.'
For instance, if one control system failed regularly, and another was very reliable, then he would use the reliable one for the next ventilation system and the same with other pieces of kit.
The first kitchen extract ventilation system was recently built in Jamie Oliver's new Italian restaurant in Oxford where I interviewed Sutherland.

Clearvent was the mechanical contractor for the new restaurant and has recently secured long-term contracts with the chef and his collection of restaurants under the banner 'Jamie's Italian'.
Needless to say, the 'two lads and a van' business has grown to 40 staff and two apprentices.
Clearvent has its head office in Doncaster with a staff of six - planning, accounts, purchasing and HR - but Sutherland says this is already too small and he expects to have to move to a larger office soon.

There is also a satellite office in High Wycombe which helps Sutherland and his team service the southern counties.

Strategic stockholding

Key stock is also held at one or two restaurants, such as the Wagamama in London's Covent Garden.
Clearvent personnel will be on site in the event of a brakedown normally within one and a half hours or two hours at the most. All the outlets have an 0845 number which they call. The call staff look on the tracker system to see where the nearest engineer is and he is then despatched to the breakdown.
So how does Sutherland see the company evolving?
He wants a brand which has longevity.

He wants clients to see Clearvent as a solid mechanical company and known for its energy-efficient designs and green credentials.

'We are trying to educate clients on the benefits of energy-efficient design versus capital expenditure. It is quite difficult. But this is changing with the cost of gas continuing to rise.
'It is a case of offering the right designs and telling clients that while one design might be cheaper, the other will be better over the life of the system and with a reduced carbon footprint.'
Clearvent is tied in with Red Engineering Design which, Sutherland says, has a green approach.
He sees a strong future for companies which offer good green mechanical design.

Often systems have been thrown up with little thought. He explains: 'The Jamie's Italian restaurant in Oxford has five zones. A heat recovery system pipes air from one part of the restaurant where it may be too warm to another where it is colder to keep the restaurant at an even temperature.'

Much of the design he wants to offer restaurants is not particularly new, but it is new to the restaurant trade. For instance, 'supermarket design is streets ahead and this is where Clearvent wants to be,' he adds.

'If you look at the drivers five years ago, energy use wasn't even in the top three. Now, alongside good staff, is keeping the energy bills down.'

He says the Oxford site uses 28m3 of gas an hour at peak times.
But Clearvent is no longer a small business and it has to change.

The burgeoning firm is now too big for Sutherland to manage adhoc and he will have to put a team in place. With this in mind, he has just appointed Claire Shepherd as financial director and Nigel Atkinson, as commercial director. Atkinson was previously with Halton Canopies, a large supplier of kitchen ventilation systems.

And the most recent announcement is the appointment of David Gomm as the company's technical director. But Sutherland is not ready to sit in a big office and just work out the strategy quite yet.

Yes, he acknowledges that this will become part of the CEO's job but he wants also to have an operational director's role too.

'I think the CEO needs the feedback that operations give.
His mind is already working that way.

'We have gas engineers, air con engineers, kitchen extract engineers, electricians and mechanical engineers but we cannot be competent in all these disciplines. At the moment we offer a basic overall competence but where do we want to be in five years time?'

It is a good problem to have and no doubt Sutherland has already figured out what he wants to do.

But he did admit that Clearvent had come a long way in just 28 months, further than he ever expected when the business was cleaning the kitchen ventilation systems in a few restaurants with two lads and a van.