SME Profile: Concrete Repairs goes it alone

Gleeson's concrete repairs contractor CRL bought itself out of the parent group for £3m earlier this month. As Will Mann finds out, managing director Tony Rimoldi believes his staff will ensure the newly independent business thrives.

When you're considering a management buy-out, there's one thing you have to be particularly confident about: the quality of your people.

And Tony Rimoldi, managing director of Concrete Repairs Limited (CRL), which bought itself out of Gleeson earlier this month for £3m, has no doubts on that front. Backing up his belief are two prestigious awards CRL has picked up in the past couple of years: the 2004 Considerate Constructors Scheme (CCS) Site of Sites Award, and earlier this summer, Contract Journal's Best Places To Work In Construction award for the SME category.

Those accolades underline Rimoldi's belief that "we have some quality people here", who were, he adds, "hugely supportive during the long and rather fraught buy-out process".

The MBO, which included the freehold of the Mitcham head office for £650,000, was completed 20 years almost to the day after MJ Gleeson originally acquired CRL. Now that it's behind him, Rimoldi and the other nine shareholders are busy laying down a business plan that should see the company grow from its present £21m turnover. Because as he sees it, growth and keeping good people go hand in hand. "You have to keep them interested," he says.

CRL's USP, Rimoldi believes, is its large - unusually so for the South East - direct workforce. "We have 80 staff, plus 120 operatives all directly employed, all CSCS qualified," he says. "All our core activities, which are quite specialist, are done in-house and we have a very effective in-house training school based here [at Mitcham], which costs about £100,000-a-year to run.

"There are few recognised training schemes for our kind of business, so we have to do a lot of the training ourselves. Each year, 20% of the workforce goes through, maybe more if we're moving into a new activity."

Additionally, Rimoldi stresses the importance of looking after staff needs beyond craft skills. "We like people to be in it for the long-term, so we offer a good package," he says. "They get stuff like BUPA, but we're also prepared to support extra-curricular activities. If an employee wants to do evening classes in golf or take French lessons, we will contribute. It's a small gesture, but it's a way of acknowledging that people have a life outside work as well.

"We also allow staff to have three days off each year on top of annual leave for work in the community," he continues, "and we sponsor a local rugby team and a water polo team."

Community focus

A community focus was to the fore when CRL won the CCS Site of Sites award in 2004 for its refurb job at Boston Hospital. "We built a giant Wendy House, which we auctioned off for the hospital charity," Rimodi recalls. "A lot of our work tends to be on live sites, where there is an interface with the public, so we understand the importance of good community relations."

It's this kind of work that is likely to remain the core of CRL's work in the post-Gleeson era. Perhaps unusually for an SME, it operates in a wide range of markets, covering everything from rail, marine and nuclear to offices, listed buildings and hospitals.

CRL has two frameworks in place - with the Highways Agency and Gleeson Engineering (30% of its work is subcontracted) - but Rimoldi envisages much of its work continuing to be competitively tendered.

"We are tendering for other frameworks," he says. "But we don't want all our eggs in one basket frameworks don't always deliver all the work promised, and can be slow to start up."

"It would be nice to have more of them, but that really depends on visionary clients with long-term budgets. For example, the Highways Agency is happy for us to use cathodic protection in the repair of its structures, because it knows it will extend their life and reduce repair and maintenance costs in the long-term. But in the short term cathodic protection costs more, and not all clients can afford that."

Specialist offerings like cathodic protection will, Rimoldi hopes, continue to give CRL the edge over its rivals. "We were the first to take carbon fibre strengthening and cathodic protection systems to the market, and we're always looking at the latest technological advances to see if we can extend the range of services we can offer," he says.

Growth areas

Sectors where Rimoldi hopes for growth are external wall insulation - mainly Decent Homes Standard work, where CRL sub-contracts the bathrooms and kitchens, one of the few things it doesn't do directly - and nuclear. "You need to have that level of expertise, understand the health and safety issues of the nuclear industry, and we have that," he says.

Rimoldi is reluctant to say what his turnover target is, for fear of alerting his competitors, but says: "We have nationwide coverage [CRL has offices in Bristol, Falkirk and Sheffield, besides Mitcham], and we can provide the same services from all our offices, so I see that as a statement of intent that we want to grow." Could that include opening new offices, or even acquisitions? "Possibly."

Since the MBO, it has largely been business as usual for CRL. "Gleeson gave us a fair bit of autonomy, and treated us well, while we provided them with stability and profit," Rimoldi says.

"We did get a fair bit of work through Gleeson Engineering in the water sector, but it wasn't laid on a plate for us. We have our own reputation and status as a business, which will hopefully continue.

"The only real difference since the buy-out is that we're probably looking at the bank account a bit more closely," he jokes, "but in reality, the commercial pressures haven't changed much."

Factfile: CRL

• Established: 1955
• Head office: Mitcham, Surrey
• Other offices: Bristol, Sheffield, Falkirk
• Turnover: £21m
• Operating margin: 4%
• Number of staff: 80, plus 120 operatives

Key markets

• Road and rail bridges
• Car parks
• Marine structures
• Tunnels
• Power/nuclear facilities
• Water industry structures
• Commercial, residential, industrial, educational, health and listed buildings

[Contract Journal, 30 August 2006, p 18)