When you think of Site Service Engineering, you think of a top class operator in structural, mechanical and pipework engineering. The company has over 20 years’ experience and works with a range of major clients in the steel, petrochemical, chemical, oil and gas industries, offering comprehensive design, fabrication and installation services throughout the UK’s Yorkshire, Humberside and Lincolnshire regions.

Site Services is part of the Stocks Group, which provides integrated engineering solutions to a number of different industries across the UK, supplying an all-inclusive turnkey service for its clients without the need to source separate contractors.

Group Director Chris Claypole has been working for the Group for seven and a half years and started as a humble van driver before working his way up through the family business. “I came in primarily as a stopgap,” says Claypole. But he showed the aptitude to rise to the role of Director and in recent times has had to come to terms with the effect of the global recession. “Over the past 18 months we saw some severe cutbacks,” he says. “At our worst we lost 60 percent of our workforce.” Since the turn of the new year the firm has started to see some green shoots, and has begun to find a few more leads but as Claypole says, they are not out of the water yet.

A NUMBER OF EXCITING PROJECTS ON THE TABLE
Luckily though, there are a number of exciting projects on the table for the firm, including various projects on the steelwork side and some pipework operations in oxygen and natural gas. Also on the agenda are some walkway and guarding projects on the steelworks, and the firm is hopefully going to be speaking to some external clients for additional daywork contracts.

The steel sector of the business, as one can imagine, has been hit hard. “Over the last three months the producers have finally begun to increase their prices to as the orders have not returned to normal levels. This has obviously had a knock-on effect with us,” says Claypole. “We have started to see an upturn in the prices that the likes of Corus are getting for their steel. This can only be good for an organisation that has such a large presence on the works and we feel that the medium term outlook is more promising.”

The green shoots previously mentioned could be said to manifest themselves throughout the Group, with the crane hire business BJW Crane Hire seeing a gradual improvement and the valve side T. Brighton Valve Services showing a recovery due to the upturn on Corus.

As one can imagine, the focus has been on cutting back rather than investment. “Our management force has gone from seven primary managers 18 months to just four in the current climate,” says Claypole.

Crucial to the firm has been the RoSPA Gold Medal Award which rewards the highest standards of occupational health and safety. Site Service Engineering has won the gold award for eight straight years now, highlighting the company’s exemplary safety record. “It’s crucial for us to be seen to be safe and healthy in our work,” says Claypole. “It’s so easy to say that people are the most important asset, but we truly believe it and there’s nothing so important we do that we can’t do it safely. We never want anyone to go home sick or injured at the end of the day because of what they have done at work, and over the last 15 months we have only had one accident - and that single accident was an unforeseen occurrence. We are finally starting to see that a good safety record is imperative in getting onto site and we are very pleased to say that we’ve got one,” says Claypole.

This safety-first approach is commonplace and instilled in all staff on all the sites they work. “If the site isn’t right, then the team doesn’t do the job, which is a huge step forward because 10 years ago they might have said ‘It’s your site so we’ll do it’,” says Claypole.

A GOOD WORKFORCE
The firm is always after good staff. “The pool of labour in the industry is slowly contracting,” says The firm is always after good staff. “The pool of labour in the industry is slowly contracting,” says But whereas some firms may bemoan the skills shortage, Claypole is being proactive in looking for solutions, having worked quite closely with governing body ECITB for the last five or six years. “They’re doing a lot of work in schools with youngsters to try and get them interested in engineering,” he says. “As always, it seems the youngsters don’t want to get their hands dirty; they’re more interested in cleaner industries. Having said that, the numbers of apprentices increase year on year so I believe that if they get some confidence that the sites are safe and that the industry will still be around in 20 or 30 years we might see the decline halted.” Other than that, Claypole believes the ECITB is doing a good job in marketing the positions and getting people involved.

He is hopeful of keeping ahead of the local competition, citing the upcoming six-month period as ‘difficult’. “We are currently experiencing an average of a company a week - one of our suppliers or creditors - falling foul of the recession and that obviously has a knock-on effect for what we can deliver. The next six months is going to be hard but we’re hoping for the new year to come around and provide us with bigger and better opportunities,” he says.