Journey to 500 : Preparing the pipeline

26/4/21: In a series of short news stories, CEO Mark Lawrence sets out some of the critical strategic features of TClarke’s recently announced Journey to 50% revenue expansion and £500m turnover. The first story focuses on the way the company is preparing to secure a permanent increase in the scale of the pipeline and quality of work coming into the business.

Early in 2020, TClarke had a very clear focus on its long term trends in the market. As construction becomes more technically complex, more focused on sustainability and net zero carbon and as the market becomes more aligned to the idea that construction projects should deliver good careers and skills for local communities, there is a steady and natural increase in the demand for high quality Engineering Services. 

We reorganised and transformed our bid teams across the UK. This was not a speculative move it was an investment to meet the latent demand for TClarke. In the previous three years, our bid teams had shown their ability to consistently target and win the profile and scale of work we require to achieve the right margins and deliver quality projects that our clients demand.

The additional capacity within our bid teams has been instrumental in helping us grow the scale of the pipeline, while at the same time maintaining the focus on the right projects with the right margin potential. 

Success has bred success and the increase in scale and consistent quality in our pipeline of secured work has allowed us to keep our efforts focused on areas of major potential.

When we announced a record order book of £456m, the real significance of that achievement may have been missed or not fully understood.  That number is not a ‘catch up’ figure of delayed projects it is a signal of bottom line revenue increase in growth sectors and it is a precursor to the permanent shift in scale we confidently expect to see in TClarke.

In the following articles, I will talk about the way we have prepared ourselves – both to grow to £500m revenue and to still have the resource capacity to grow further and deliver the quality we are known for.