| We provide services across the whole life of many types of buildings and infrastructure such as hospitals, schools, offices, retail centres, industrial plant, bridges, waterworks or roads. We offer our services at each stage of the asset lifecycle: we build, we help others build by hiring them equipment, we maintain, we support operations and we replace. |
We can deliver the best value to our clients when combining several services. This may be during one phase in the lifetime of an asset, such as where we supply a suite of support services in live operational facilities, or across several phases from early design through construction and into ongoing facilities management (FM). Our understanding of clients' objectives and practices, combined with the breadth of skills and resources at our disposal across the asset life cycle, enable us to tailor the services we offer meet individual client needs.
We believe that our existing markets offer significant opportunities through the long term and that our position in them, built on the model above, is strong. The main thrust of our strategy is therefore to develop each of our businesses organically, based on the cultivation of long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with our clients. The breadth of our services capability means that we can extend and develop many of these relationships, offering enhanced value for money through removing unnecessary interfaces and generating mutual stability.
Each of our businesses has developed a range of skills which we deploy in helping our clients achieve their goals. We aim both to augment these skills, enabling us to offer more services to our existing clients, and to take our expertise to new markets. For example, in Facilities Services the MacLellan acquisition has given us a top-three position in the FM retail sector and we shall be seeking to offer our comprehensive range of services to more clients in this exciting market.
In Project Services we have proven abilities in delivering complex projects consistently on time and to budget, often in "live" environments, and in advising our customers on construction and development matters as their businesses advance. One outcome of this approach is the creation of an enviable level of revenue stability and visibility – our future workload extends forward several years through a series of framework agreements with major clients in both the public and private sectors. The same skills are equally important internationally, where our success is based on offering certainty of delivery on projects requiring sophisticated logistical management.
Equipment Services' design, engineering and logistics skills are important differentiating factors. The main sources of growth in this business will be a continued focus on our major markets, investment in developing new products and on taking our equipment fleet into new territories. In some cases we can do this by using more of our existing product range in markets where we are already present, while in others we shall consider geographical expansion. We have recently opened up an operation in Oman, where our Project Services associate company is well established, and will be developing our presence in South Africa this year.
Acquisitions in related fields provide additional opportunities to grow the Group alongside organic growth. The purchase of MacLellan in 2006 is an example of the successful implementation of this strategy. It represents a step-change in our development, giving us the opportunity to expand our outsourcing business significantly by cross-selling more services to wider markets. This strategic rationale was underpinned by MacLellan's strong market position and its specialist security activities, enabling us to enhance our position as one of the UK's leading support services companies, with a balanced and very high quality client base.
In concert with the acquisition we also enacted another element of the strategy, which was to integrate our Industrial Services business into the Facilities Services division alongside MacLellan. In doing so we have made it possible to rationalise the back office and to increase the co-ordination and cross-selling of our FM services through a single reorganised structure.
We continue to assess the opportunities for selective acquisitions to enhance our service offering or give us access to new market segments.
