You may have noticed that we’ve just refreshed the Complete Utilities brand. I love it. But what I love even more is that underneath our exciting new ‘skin’ we’re still exactly the same business, with the same experienced, hard-working team. That means always saying ‘yes’ to the installation challenges others may shy away from and working together with our clients and partners to ensure nothing stands in the way of delivering networks.
Setting up Complete Utilities, with a single hired excavator in 1999, I already knew that ‘saying yes’ was going to be a major part of my business philosophy. My father had once said to me, don’t ever turn down a cup of tea because you’ll never be offered another one. This advice stuck and I firmly believed a ‘yes, we can do that’ attitude was going to be key if I was to be given the chance to prove there was a better way of installing telecoms, water, power or gas networks. Fast-forward 20+ years, and a long list of completed projects and satisfied utilities and civil engineering companies is proof the approach works.
Admittedly, being an independent, family-run business all these years has made it easier for us to say ‘yes’. We don’t have layers of decision making and bureaucracy to wade through and we’ve been able to develop a smarter, more agile and accountable approach to installing networks. So today, we’re trusted to install, upgrade and maintain critical infrastructure from HV power to 5G and fresh drinking water, quickly, safely and on budget.
We take total ownership of projects from end to end, from site surveys to traffic management. We plan ahead to anticipate challenges and find solutions before they happen to keep projects on track. We don’t rely on third-party contractors so we always have the right tools ready to do the job. In fact, we let nothing stand between our clients, their networks and their revenue streams so when we say ‘yes’, it’s because we know we’re 100% responsible for delivering on it.
It also helps that we’ve invested significantly in our own people and have a team of over 300 employees at our state-of-the-art offices just outside Gloucester. We have the capability to complete any project and the only question we need ask ourselves today is ‘can we deliver efficiently, to programme and, most importantly, safely?. Which is why we ensure HSEQ and compliance are firmly at the forefront of every job.
I find saying ‘yes’ is also strangely infectious. For instance, when our client Gigaclear wanted a revolutionary narrow trench machine to speed up the roll out of its fibre network, I personally flew out to Italy to successfully persuade machinery pioneer Tesmec to especially develop one. Similarly, when we first met our now MD, Cathal O’Grady, back in 2003, he was Operations Manager at Balfour Beatty. Having visited our Gloucester yard it was our can-do attitude that persuaded him to make us one of his supply chain partners. Over the years we have said ‘yes’ to so many of his requests, that when we asked him to join Complete Utilities and shape the next phase of our development, what else could his answer be?
But our positive approach isn’t just about saying ‘yes’ to our clients. It means saying ‘yes’ to investing significantly in new plant machinery and technology. ‘Yes’ to recruiting the right people and supporting their training and development. Saying ‘yes’ to rewarding our employees that go above and beyond. When we‘re recruiting we look for something I now call ‘The Yes factor’. Demonstrating enthusiasm can go along way and we want people who share our can-do attitude, who are team players and who demonstrate integrity. They say ‘One willing volunteer is better than 10 pressed men’. Trust me, when you find yourself in challenging conditions, team work is what gets cables pulled through and means nothing stands in the way of our clients’ networks.
One example of this is our recent success as the first ever contractor to drill 5 metres under the bed of the River Severn, to deliver ultrafast broadband for our partner Gigaclear to communities in the Forest of Dean. Until now, these villages have been avoided by broadband providers because of their inaccessibility. (Just the kind of challenge we relish.) The project involved real teamwork, both internally and with our partners and stakeholders. By drilling below the River Severn using a horizontal directional drill that we imported especially for the project, we were able to lay 6.5km of fibre cable and connect two communities to the modern, super-fast world.
For me that’s further proof there’s nothing this team can’t do and the culmination of two decades of saying ‘yes’. Tell us what you’re trying to achieve and we’ll almost certainly be able to give you the same answer.