Mark Gledhill, director of Huddersfield-based Crowther & Shaw, talks to Paul Braithwaite about satisified customers who make up a vast client base which gives the company the stability from which it can grow and prosper.
Mark Gledhill has common sense. I don't know why I chose to start this article with this statement except that this is the quality, among others, I might add, which is quickly apparent.

He, on the other hand, would describe himself as steady. Mark is a director of Crowther & Shaw, a Huddersfield-based air conditioning and refrigeration installation, service and maintenance company.

Work is split about 50:50 FM: installation at the moment although Mark is conscious the air conditioning install market has dived. Nevertheless, the service and maintenance side of the business is actually improving dramatically. The company has recently picked up three major clients and, surprisingly based on general industry trends, has had to take on staff.

Its existing client book looks like the great and the good of the region's local authorities. Mark admits to being surprised he won these three contracts but quickly knuckled down to the practicalities of the new business. And he is not unhappy about the sort of business he has gained - providing service and maintenance support to Cheshire schools and Hull hospitals.

'They might query an invoice or two but they will pay their bills.'
Currently Mark has 11 engineers, including two new staff, and two apprentices.
The company began as plumbing and electrical engineers in 1938 and later turned into a refrigeration company as that industry grew. Mark joined in 1985 as an apprentice engineer. In 2006, when he was service manager, he and partner Martin Howlett bought the company.

It is not quite as simple as that!
There were two parts to the company. Crowther & Shaw Ltd, the FM side (which Mark and Martin bought) and Crowther & Shaw Contracting Ltd which was involved with coldstore installation and was making a loss. Contracting subsequently went into administration.

Martin had started his working life at Crowther & Shaw and worked with Mark. He left to pursue other areas before setting up his own business within the air conditioning and m&e sector. Mark admits he spent a great deal of the first year explaining to clients and potential clients they had not gone bust. Indeed, says Mark, the company increased its turnover and profit in 2006 and has since increased its turnover year on year.

He has been running Crowther & Shaw since then while his partner concentrated on his other business. And while there is no financial link between the two companies each is able to sub contract work to the other when necessary.
Mark has recently promoted engineer Tom Betts to a new role of sales engineer.

More installation work

It is now Tom's job to bring in more installation work while Mark concentrates on running the company and looking after the FM clientele.
Crowther & Shaw has some 400 maintenance contracts at around 3,000 sites. And this means everything from one site with 500 pieces of equipment to a corner shop with one split system.

The Hull Hospitals contract which began in August and runs for three years, is one of thebiggest FM contracts yet and Mark expects that, while all the engineers are mobile, at least one will spend a year on site permanently while the work is assessed.
He has no illusions. 'There will be a lot of catching-up to do as there has been no maintenance on site for some time' and he 'expects we will be hammered' on costs during the first 12 months with the payback coming after that.

Turnover was substantially down in the first six months of Crowther & Shaw's financial year 'although we were still making a profit'. However, in the last three months turnover has increased dramatically and Mark predicts turnover and profit will be ahead of last year's.

'If we can do this in this current economic climate, we can be reasonably happy,' he insists.
Mark adds that his market seems to be picking up.

'Most of our projects for install clients are worth between £5,000 and £10,000. This is often being funded by the money companies have been keeping in their banks rather than spending during the early part of the recession. Now, as the downturn recedes, they feel able to release it.'
Crowther & Shaw have also been more proactive, with promotional flyers and brochures.

'Tom has not had the best of times either. He changed jobs as the recession hit and he has had a baptism of fire.'
That said, Mark insists much of the new business has come from its existing customer base which is pretty solid, he believes.

He says he has had some customers for 20 years and they are obviously pleased with the work because they usually come back to the firm for any extra installation work.
'I won't say customers have never gone elsewhere for the work but most do not.'

The company has quite a wide area to cover from the East Coast, through to Liverpool, Cheshire, up to Lancaster, Newcastle and down to Derby and Leicester, so pinpointing a main opposition is difficult although the recession has thrown up a number of one- and two-man air conditioning installers who cut costs by operating from a van.

'We know what we need from a job - cost of materials, cost of labour etc - and these people can undercut us but that is competition.'

Mark cited one job which was not up to the standard Crowther & Shaw would expect. 'We were asked to quote to install a simple air conditioning system. However the client had had a system installed previously by someone else which had an indoor unit, a pipe out through the wall which went diagonally across to the outdoor condensing unit. There were no clips, no pipes, no tray, and no trunking.'
Crowther & Shaw did not get the job. 'We wanted to do the work but we wanted to do a quality installation. The client was happy to allow its original contractor to return as it was cheap'!

'We have to maintain our standards even though a lot of customers do not know the difference between a good job and a bad one.
'How does a customer know, for instance, what is above the ceiling tiles in an office? Is the piping correctly supported or randomly clipped? He does not see it - until perhaps some years later when it could fail.'

Mark adds it is sometimes hard to justify what a customer sees as extra cost. But he has worked to his own standards during his 15 years on the tools and this gave him the satisfaction of a job well done!

Hopefully, this ethos is being instilled into the two apprentices. Of the current 11 engineers employed, half of them are home-grown and have come through the companies' apprenticeship scheme.
'We have a good tradition of training apprentices; the problem has been retaining them.'

Mark has had to change the traditional pay policy.
'It used to be an apprentice did a year at college and he would be rewarded with a small pay rise, then another year and another rise.
'Now they reach and pass NVQ level 2, they are in fact qualified engineers. But we know their worth, we have seen what they do day-to-day and pay them accordingly.
'Other companies, desperate for qualified engineers, see they are qualified and poach them. And the apprentices think they are worth more - and leave.'

Mark had to pay more 'than they are actually worth' so that the time and effort spent on training them is not lost.
For the apprentices it means that when they are fully qualified the jump in wages is smaller but they have been retained within the company.
The current apprentices are older than normal, says Mark at 18 and 19 and they are both in their second year at college.

Crowther & Shaw have had some star apprentices with one even winning Skillfridge (a competition for young air con and refrigeration engineers) in the UK and competing in Japan as a world finalist.

What does Mark look for in an apprentice? Last year he interviewed 10 youngsters.
'Sometimes I get a gut feeling but I always look for a stable home life, they have to be sensible and have good school reports and be interested in the work.
'A couple of those we took on came originally as work experience youngsters and you just get a feeling.'

He also deals with BEST, the HVCA's training company, so by the time they come to him apprentices have been thoroughly vetted. Nevertheless, the number of interviewees who turn up in T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms astonishes him.

Old-fashioned take

'I would not let my son go to an interview for a job dressed like that! They are trying to sell themselves as potential employees. I have an old-fashioned take on this as you can see.'

As I said at the beginning of the article Mark sees himself as steady and that's the way he wants the company to grow.
He expects to triple turnover again during the next five years but, with forward thinking, he adds that before that happens he will have to add a layer to what is, at the moment, a lean management structure, to cover the work.

He sees the next step as 20 engineers with a contracts manager and a service manager.
First priority is another sales engineer, or perhaps two, to go out and get more business - and support the engineers on these jobs. As the work comes in then Mark expects to use sub contractors until he can put his own directly employed engineers in place. Maintenance is, he says, like that! The Hull Hospitals contract took six months of waiting and then he was told his company would begin 'next Monday'.

Mark's commonsense philosophy comes through when he discusses business. Owning a company has not fazed him. He has not moved to a bigger home or indulged himself or his family heavily.
His insists the vast customer base gives Crowther & Shaw the stability it needs to grow but at a controlled pace where it can prosper too.