Established and fully customer-focused: the simple recipe driving success in the South West
Gary Tidball reviews a year in post leading TClarke in Devon and Cornwall.
“A year ago, I made it my priority to sit down with our clients and listen – and to share a simple message: we are focused on your satisfaction. Last week, we had the experience of hosting 200 clients, supply chain partners and some of our own team at a golf day and charity dinner, where we raised money for Brake, the road safety charity. The mood and the attendance – alongside our record in those twelve months – show exactly what TClarke means in this region’s construction industry. We are a long-established business with deep roots, and we stand for good relationships and good projects.
Restructured and set for ongoing growth
When I came in, we carried out a swift and purposeful restructure designed to optimise our entire operation, deliver client service and create a strong focus on our sweet spot of contracts around £1m–£10m, while also re-energising our excellent Small Works operation. This meant bringing our teams together, improving efficiency and sharing resources. The purpose was to enable efficiency and, critically, maximise our competitiveness for our clients in the ‘sweet spot’ of projects we want to win.
Focused on clients and our ‘sweet spot’ up to £10m
People know that TClarke has deep skills and resource expertise. My goal was also to show our clients that TClarke in the South West is competitive and focused on delivering for them. It’s my belief that good teams, working well together and working for good clients on a secure pipeline of live projects, are the straightforward route to sustainable growth and profitability.
Together with the restructure, this market reset has also been about fully deploying the classic TClarke discipline of targeted tendering. This has had the effect of giving our bidding teams more time to do fewer, better bids. It makes for happier teams and enables the flow of the right kind of projects.
Revenue secured two months into the year
Proof that these changes have delivered shows in the fact that, two months into our financial year, we have our revenue entirely secured for the year ahead – on real projects that will get out of the ground on time and deliver results for everyone involved.
TClarke showcases the power of a long-established regional business
I’ve been with TClarke for many years now, and this is only the second employer of my career. I am very proud of what we have here. We have excellent people and a highly systematic and organised approach as part of the leading building services contractor in the country.
The value in our site teams and office teams cannot be replicated overnight, or even in a few years. It is something you build steadily over time – something you invest in and nurture. For our customers, it means reliable quality and engineering knowledge that they can rely on to deliver the job.
It is the power of our people that has re-energised our customer relationships, and all credit goes to the teams and individuals across our South West operation who do the work, day in, day out.
Consistently and fully invested for our future in the South West
We are an efficient operation, but we are also longstanding investors in our people. We are completely committed to TClarke apprenticeships and career progression, creating high-quality opportunities within the region.
Today, if you go onto a TClarke site, you see young people learning and time-served TClarke engineers spending time helping them, just as they were helped before. These investments continue, as they always have. Construction can be simple: good people, good relationships and good work as a result.
Growth on the right platform
We have the targeted tendering discipline, we have clarity on our sweet spot, and we are 100% customer-focused. We deliver the classic TClarke offer of reliable quality from our own high-quality people. This gives us the right platform for growth – and I must stress it again – what we have achieved in the last year is down to our team of men and women in our offices in St Austell and Plymouth, and across our sites in the region.