M.B.Roche & Sons Ltd – Constructing Excellence Yorkshire & Humber SME of the Year Winners 2015
Last Friday saw this year’s Constructing Excellence Yorkshire & Humber Awards 2015 being held at the National Railway Museum in York, the event brought together over 350 industry professionals, representing a wide cross-section of the construction sector, in a spectacular celebration to recognise and reward the very best examples of construction excellence, collaboration and best practice the regional built environment has been involved in over the last 12 months.
Fourteen different awards were handed out, each representing the core themes of the Constructing Excellence strategy, including leadership and people development, SME of the year and new for 2015, BIM project of the year.
Hull-based civil engineering contractors M.B.Roche & Sons Ltd were named SME of the Year.
This Award specifically recognised the challenges and outstanding achievements of Small to Medium Enterprises, particularly those who have made strides in improving their company through implementing best practice. Judges were looking for companies that intentionally focus on people development, customer satisfaction, industry best practice, performance management, and new ways of collaborative working. Entrants had to demonstrate a commitment to sustainability and health and safety; describing the steps that have been taken to improve performance in this area through the 4 Cs of co-operation, communication, competence and commitment.
Our aim was to move to a best value approach, with a shift away from lowest price wins to a best value philosophy delivered by the right local people with the right training, qualifications and experience.
We focused our attention on client retention by developing long lasting relationships which would lead to repeat business.
By eliminating inefficiencies we have a newly considered approach to winning business with greater business visibility and reporting results.
But such an approach, in an industry which suffered long into the recession, and where cut-throat pricing is the norm, is not easy to maintain.
We had one simple challenge, to be the provider of choice for our customers and clients without diluting our values, quality or profitability.
We have continuous commitment to training at all levels and are happy to invest in our people as we believe it is good for the future prospects of the business. By understanding our employees we are maximising their benefit to our company and in return they feel more valued and are more motivated. Investing in them is investing in their future, leading to reduced absenteeism and a higher quality of work.
The investment in people pays off financially for the business and means we can access tendering processes which lesser qualified companies cannot.
We decided to take a step back from the business and review our key strengths and barriers to growth and create a plan for the future.
What we delivered was a strategic business plan hashing out the direction for the future of the business. We needed to focus on developing new and existing client relationships and maximised opportunities to deliver value, quality and efficiency.
We were able to clearly see what areas of the business needed greater visibility and used this information and turned it into results. We reviewed our costs associated with our procedures, practices and operations and are now focusing our time and resources on the type of contracts that are most profitable to us. We have developed and streamlined many processes and eliminated inefficient and ineffective practices.
Whilst some of these improvements may only be a small part of the business we can fully see that even the small improvements or marginal gains can have a really significant effect on our profitability and quality.
