Fire Engineering Practice Specialising In Smoke Control For Sale

Business description

Formally established in 1995 built upon the Owner’s extensive experience within the fire engineering and fire protection sector, this business has become one of the UK’s leading specialists in fire safety engineering with particular expertise in smoke control and pressurisation.

Working primarily with Architects and Developers – and some major Contractors this business, one of the few experienced organisations within the industry, provides the highest quality consultancy across the wide array of different fire engineering and fire protection issues. The loyal Client base provides significant volumes of repeat business on an on-going basis including some of the leading UK and International companies. Such is the demand for the services of this business that it frequently finds it necessary to turn away business – cherry picking its Clients and the projects it works upon.

This business provides one of the most professional and cost effective fire safety design and support services available – working mainly on new build construction projects but also the upgrading of existing equipment. Working on a mix of retail, commercial and residential projects, this business provides a comprehensive service including the development of fire engineering strategy incorporating all the requirements of the latest legislation, negotiating with regulators and fire officers, the development of fire plans, fire risk assessment, smoke control design and the design of compartment pressurization systems - together with all the necessary computations. Working closely with the Client throughout, the business is on hand to supervise installations where appropriate right through to ‘snagging’ the completed project.

This business has been involved in some of the most high profile construction projects in the UK including the development of one of the UK’s most impressive sports stadia, major footfall shopping centres, car parks and high profile office blocks. And with fire engineering estimated to reduce building projects on an average development by approximately 3% and as much as 20% on the most complex projects there is significant demand for the services of this business. The building projects are getting more complex to build and the life-cycle costs are also affected by fire engineering.

This is a very well established business that has been carefully managed in recent years by the current Owner to meet his personal commercial and lifestyle objectives. As a result, growth has been deliberately and carefully managed. With an excellent, longstanding reputation and a Client list ripe for future development, this represents an excellent opportunity for another fire engineering company to significantly build their Client base or an operation in an adjacent sector – a Consulting Engineers practice for example looking to break into this area of the marketplace.

Key strengths:

Operating since 1995 and with a profile within the industry stretching back beyond that, this is a very well established and experienced business. This business has an excellent, ‘cherry picked’ Client base – this business only works with Clients and on the projects it wants to – providing a constant stream of projects and as a result, fee income. Fees for some projects can stretch to tens of thousands of pounds.

This business has an excellent reputation within its sector for high levels of Client care involving close personal attention. It has extensive contacts within the industry – from manufacturers of equipment, building contractors, Architects, Designers, Developers, right through to Building Control.

Not surprisingly this business has all the Standards necessary to operate within its profession and an extensive library including all of the projects it has ever worked upon from Day One. Also the buildings that the business has produced fire strategies for, that are now ‘in-use’, have the business details embedded in them. This generates a backgroundstream of useful queries and opportunities.

Key opportunities:

There is an excellent opportunity to build on the existing client base of this company. With a strong demand for services and capacity to increase turnover, a new owner would contribute fresh ideas and outside influence to build on an excellent base.

There is no doubt that legislation is working in favour of this business – a situation that will persist – generating increasing demand for the services this business offers. This business is ideally placed to take maximum advantage of this situation as it develops.

Operated to meet the personal, commercial and lifestyle objectives of the current Owner – even to the extent of turning work away and ‘skimming off’ the most interesting and lucrative projects, with all available resources dedicated towards service delivery, this business has had little need to market its services to a wider target audience, outside its current Client base. The development and implementation of detailed Marketing Plan together with the recruitment of additional resources to fulfill the increased demand would have a significant, positive impact on turnover and profitability.

Property information

Location:

There are no premises included in the sale of the business – as such it is easily re-locatable

Other information

Competition / Market:

Having been established for such a long period of time, this business benefits from high levels of Client awareness within the sectors in which it operates. For the core areas of operation the business does little or no advertising except inclusions in various directories and seminars to Consulting Engineers for example, for which this business has a number of detailed power point fire engineering presentations covering its major areas of operation. Primarily, however, the business benefits from significant volumes of repeat business from a very loyal and active customer base and the most cost effective form of marketing of all, strong word of mouth recommendation. The business also has a well designed and informative web presence that performs very well in all the major search engines for all appropriate search topics.

Support & training:

The owner is willing to provide continuity for the new owners with a hand over, perhaps on a Consultancy basis for a period of between 6 and 2 months, subject to negotiation – including assisting in training personnel, if appropriate.

Reasons for selling:

The Owner wishes to retire from fire engineering and concentrate on other interests.