Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/437549
8 WET NEWS JANUARY 2015 "If you look at where the market's been, we've just come through a very, very aggressive recessionary cycle and clients are looking very much to consolidate their supply chains" " We've got very aggressive growth plans, and we want to double the size of our business, and that fundamentally means the whole of Kier," says John Wilkinson, executive director of the group's services division. Wilkinson is talking about Vision 20, Kier's strategy to double the size of its business to £6bn by 2020. And Wilkinson wants to double the service side of the services division's business. This will be achieved through organic growth but he is not ruling out acquisition if the right opportunity presented itself. "If we find the right acquisition that would be margin-enhancing and gives us further delivery penetration and it's the right fit for us, then it would be ridiculously stupid not to look at them." Integrating a new addition to the Kier family is something that Wilkinson is used to, after all the majority of the May Gurney business has been a complementary fit into his division. May Gurney was bought by Kier for £220M-plus in July 2013 following a tug-of-war with Costain. 'Unique challenges' Wilkinson says of that acquisition: "Kier liked the fit of May Gurney, and the two businesses had very similar cultures and behaviours. It was a nice strategic fit from that point of view." Since the acquisition, Kier has been going through the process of integrating May Gurney. "We were talking about integrating a business that was doing £700M of revenue in round numbers, has 6,000 employees. Bringing that number of people across was going to present some unique challenges." There have been very few redundancies, says Wilkinson, with most of May Gurney being integrated into Kier services division. May Gurney's rail business has moved into Kier's infrastructure division. "At the services level, what Kier bought was complementary services so there was very little overlap," Wilkinson adds. The only are that both businesses did in terms of operating in similar markets was in the environmental waste market. The utilities capability was completely new to Kier and because of the size of the contracts that it had got with the likes of Anglian, Severn, Bristol, for instance, they were almost standalone businesses. Strategy Going forward, Kier's focus is on service and quality. Wilkinson explains: Our strategy is to keep that penetration [in the water sector] going into the opex market and delivering on the back of what we know going forward – that's service, that's quality. "It's about being able to do all the various activities either through elements of invest- ment to major construction activity through the opex spend but also renewed capability within Kier. "That's where really we see our focus in terms of the water market, as well as support- ing clients in terms of customer satisfaction, SIM scores, real forward thinking in terms of cutting edge IT solutions. "Our industry is very much about the quality of the service we deliver safely, on time, good customer experience and which Ofwat is going to be very focused on going through this next regulatory cycle." Forefront Wilkinson says that is "absolutely the right place to be. There's an expectation that utility bills are going to fall across the next few years and we've got to be at the forefront of that driving right the way across technology, e– ciency to make sure we keep delivering a very good service". And with the massive move towards asset management life cycle cost and activity the industry has got to get smarter. "We've got to challenge ourselves in terms of how we increase our productivity so that our guys, instead of doing three leak repairs a day, are doing four or five. That's about making sure we get them to the right place at the right time, with the right equipment and the right materials, and that they're safe and present themselves in the right manner. "It's much more about how our technology offering actually makes us do that quicker and more effective. That's fundamentally where it's going to be." Smarter way Wilkinson says this will be driven by the regulator, Ofwat, and Kier's clients because they expect things to be done in a smarter way. "Fundamentally our guys are doing the job when they're actually digging the hole in the ground and not travelling between jobs. "The quicker we can move them in a smart sequence with the ability when there is reactive-type activity coming into the control centre or customer centre and be able to schedule those through a technical platform it's going to drive all that productivity improvement." John Wilkinson Executive director, Services, Kier WHAT YOU DIDN'T KNOW! It's not good for my image but I like... Getting down into the real operational delivery side of things, on the ground with the guys. It's where I get my fun, spark and energy from I drive... BMW 530 diesel I'm currently reading... The Woman Who Fell From The Sky My greatest weakness is... Probably talking too much! My favourite TV programme is... Sons of Anarchy INTERVIEW