Water and Effluent Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/844437
8 Leaders 2017 The LeADeRS 2017 Stonbury is seizing its opportunities The introduction of a regional structure is helping Stonbury to deal with the tremendous growth experienced in the past year or two. Return on Capital % Stonbury 132.1 Public Sewer Services 130.1 Aecom Design Build 96.7 Claret 62.2 Kirk Environmental 61.2 Mace 54.6 Lewis Civil Engineering 51.6 J Browne Construction 44.3 Seymour Civil Engineering 38.5 Dyer & Butler 34.4 Net margin % Stonbury 14.4 Public Sewer Services 13.8 PN Daly 12.9 MWH UK 12.5 J Browne Construction 10.6 Lewis Civil Engineering 7.8 Claret 7.5 Kirk Environmental 6.5 Mott MacDonald 6.3 Carillion Utility Services 4.8 "We've palanned for this. It doesn't scare us. What we want is to make sure we took every opportunity and enjoyed it" " We've seen a real acceleration of growth," says Stonbury managing director James Stonor. "But strangely, even though we've had that growth and there's a lot of new people – we're up to 170 people – it has been manageable. "We knew what the potential was, we knew what the opportunity was. This isn't about what has just happened in the last year or two. It's the combination of certainly the last ten years, and putting in place structure and foundation that allowed that growth and scalability." And Stonor says it has been "so good to see that work". He says a regional structure has been introduced to make sure the company could deliver what it wanted to. "While the company has grown within our market place – it's a medium-sized company, it's not massive – we've got that brilliant support func- tion in HR, IT, marketing which has come in leaps and bounds." Stonbury operates 100% in the water industry, specialising in the repair, refur- bishment and maintenance of service res- ervoirs, water towers and associated structures. It also has a civils engineering arm. The company, which tops the Top 10 tables for return on capital, net margin and operating margin. It reported reported a 33% rise in turn- over to £16.8M for its 2015/16 financial year, and pre-tax profit leapt from £1.4M in 2014/15 to £2.4M last year. Stonor expects revenue to be around £25M 2016/17. The new regional structure that has been put in place at Stonbury entails col- oured teams located around the country. Each team works with a maximum of two clients "so we can look specifically at what their requirements are and how they want us to work for them and they [the clients] are working with the same people all the time", says Stonor. "It's about getting consistency and a 'small company feel', for want of a better phrase. "You have these regions, and they're run by team leaders in the business and they do operate like small companies but Stonbury Chawston House, Chawston Lane, Chawston, Beds MK44 3BH. www.stonbury