SES builder services move into new offices

Mar 13 2009 by Graeme King, The Journal

BUSINESS is so strong at building services business SES that the company has moved into new offices one third bigger than its old home.

SES, or Shepherd Engineering Services as it used to be known, is expecting to post sales of about £17.5m for the 12 months to July, up an impressive 52% from the £11.5m achieved in 2007/08.

The North Shields base of the company is also confident of posting a similar result for 2009/10. With an order book full of work, much of it public sector, SES is faring rather better than those more reliant on private sector contracts.

Just five years since opening a North East office in the Centre for Advanced Industry in North Shields, SES has moved upstairs to the "penthouse suite" with 2,463 sq ft of space, big enough to accommodate all 30 office staff, among SES’s 125 total numbers.

Since it opened in 2003, turnover has grown from £3m a year, allowing operations director Steve Joyce to look ahead with some confidence, despite the wider economic situation.

Mr Joyce said: "Over the past five years we have seen a very positive response to SES locally as a preferred supplier and developed strong working relationships with a number of our project partners, which I am confident will continue to be the case. This new self-contained accommodation, which in the main will be open plan, gives us greater flexibility to house our operational staff.

"We have capacity for 30 staff, with about one third more space than the old office. There is scepticism in the market place, but we do a lot of government-led work, like universities, schools and hospitals. There is still some spend in those industries and we have geared our business up to do that.

"We think that for the foreseeable future, we are OK – not hiring, but not firing. The office move gives us a little bit of expansion space as and when jobs do come in."

Past projects for SES have included work on Darlington Education Village and Newcastle’s High Heaton Library, while currently, the contractor is on site on major schemes such as the redevelopment of the city’s Great North Museum, construction of the new City Library, which is due for completion this month, in March the latest hotel to be constructed at Newcastle Airport and the ambitious development at Rockliffe Hall, near Darlington, to create the UK’s newest five-star leisure development.