Case Study - What shall we do??

After the acquisition of a company to generate growth it was apparent to our client that the 'due diligence ' findings were flawed.

We were asked to interrogate the situation and offer the answer to the Board of Directors question:
"Shall we dissolve or invest in this new company?"

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We set about a six-week onsite interrogation of the structure, management, delivery and commercial control of the newly acquired company [NAC] and generated a clear report of our findings.

We also supplied a proposed Business Plan mapping a 3 year turn-around period for the client if our investment recommendation was accepted.

During this six-week period our mandate included: 

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• Ownership for controlling all actions of the existing NAC Directors and our  signature was required to authorise their spends.

• Controlling the previous poor decision-making and performance;

• Actioning without delay whatever was necessary to stem losses and poor performance.

• Development of NAC as a functioning body while compiling an in-depth assessment of the company to inform the proposal and Business Plan.

• Liaison with clients and statutory bodies - building relationships with clients and statutory bodies as part of the plan -resolving the many financial disputes and final accounts of Projects.

• Assessment and corporate overview of the NAC operations: Part of this review and interrogation was to ensure legal compliance with a main focus on checking company exposure to non-compliant projects.  Updated systems to capture legislation and Approved Code of Practice changes

• Appointment of consultants and specialist contractors: Reviewing scopes and works packages of consultants and specialist contractors prior to appointments. Scopes were forwarded for review and comment and the final contract and appointment document to be approved by us.

• Programming of all NACs service provision - controlling the spend and resource of the whole company by focusing on minimising waste and unnecessary spends for the period of the review.

• Ownership for SHEQ compliance monitoring, company-wide assessment of SHEQ performance, identifying, resolving and implementing urgent improvements. that achieved minimum legal requirements

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The NAC is a specialist contractor with a turnover 2015 of £1.8M and headcount of 23.

GO objective identified within our propose Business Plan, was to reduce overhead and waste, increase turnover to £5M within a three-year period while expanding the client base and industry sectors.

GO Key Responsibilities

• Ownership for moulding and developing the current workforce removing and replacing as necessary, streamlining the company, maximising profits and improving the service provision to existing and future clients;  building marketplace trust in the company’s brand

• Changed the business model to reflect what was identified in proposedl Business Plan; reduced the headcount to 12 in a management manner and increased turnover by 200% improving performance levels from 16% to 25% over cost.

• Ownership for business development and client liaison - second strand of GO objective was to re-engage existing and past clients, expand the client base and offer service to clients that resulted in repeat business or client referrals. Currently 72% of NACs projects are repeat business or referrals from the NACs clients

• Accountable for the development of procedures to be fully compliant with BSI accredited standards.  transition had to be achieved in a phased manner to avoid disruption to projects and employee disengagement - full integration  was achieved in April 2017

• Liaison closely with clients and statutory bodies, ensuring long-lasting relationships with stakeholders through face-to-face communications; clients and statutory bodies are the two key stakeholders in the NACs industry

• Assessment and corporate overview in all NACs operations, ensuring legal compliance and updating systems that captures legislation and Code of Practice changes; legislation  and Approved Codes of Practice are always developing and it is essential that the NAC is aware of such changes adapting processes to reflect this thereby, protecting licences and permits

• Ownership for tendering, contracts and delivery departments direction, support and control; within the NAC, reviewing every tender that is received, initially deciding if it fits the company’s pipeline requirement (Client, sector, industry, value and programme). Assign a risk rating and allocating to the most suitable manager to tender - through this process personally assisting in the tendering and estimation of potential projects and the supply of technical support of bespoke solutions.

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