For the first time ever, we have turned down the opportunity to tender for some of the work funded by the Condition Improvement Fund that is available in schools over the summer. We don’t believe it will benefit our business in the short-to-medium term.
We pride ourselves on being a good company to work for and our rates of pay and benefits package are amongst the best in the industry. But we would still find it challenging to find enough resource to cope with significant extra volumes at this point.
All our existing teams are fully occupied with ongoing contracts and pre-planned schools work. We won’t jeopardise existing work just for the sake of additional volume.
It’s the old adage: ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity’. While it goes against every entrepreneurial instinct to turn down work, we think it’s the right decision for our business.
Time and again we see good companies fail simply because they overstretch themselves. While there is insufficient skilled labour in the market, that could become a very real danger for some.
We are arguably at just about the optimal size for an installation business at the moment, with a tightly knit senior team that can still oversee every project individually. We still have capacity for growth, primarily because we have invested in tech solutions that make us operationally efficient, but we are realistic about current state of the labour market, and we are becoming increasingly selective about the additional work we take on.
David Thornton
Chair of the Window Company (Contracts)
